t 


^Cf- 


A  SURVEY  OF 
ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

1780-1880 


BY 

OLIVER   ELTON 

D.LITT.,    LL.D.,    F.B.A., 
EMERITUS    PROFESSOR  IN  THE   UNIVERSITY  OF    LIVERPOOL 


IN  FOUR  VOLUMES 
VOL.  Ill 


Second   Impression 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


First  Published  in  1920 
Reprinted  1927 


PRINTED   BY   LOWE   AND   BRYDONE    (PRINTERS)    LTD.,  LONDON 


TO 

L.  M.  E. 


?K 

ES\ 

j  3 

PREFACE 

In  a  Survey,  published  eight  years  ago,  of  the  English  literature 
written  between  1780  and  1830,  the  motto  was  taken  from 
Hazlitt  :  '  I  have  endeavoured  to  feel  what  is  good,  and  to  give 
a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  me,  when  necessary,  and  when 
in  my  power.'  The  present  work  is  a  continuation  ;  the  motto 
and  spirit,  the  plan  and  arrangement,  are  the  same  as  before. 
Here  are  another  fifty  years  chronicled  ;  that  they  form  a  real, 
not  an  artificial,  period,  the  book  itself  must  prove.  And  the 
aim  is  still  critical,  rather  than  simply  historical,  although  the 
historical  pattern  and  background  have  been  kept  well  in  mind . 
I  hope  at  least  to  have  shown  that  more  Victorian  prose  and 
verse  deserves  to  live  than  is  sometimes  imagined.  No  doubt, 
if  any  one  born  in  the  present  century  reads  these  pages,  and 
is  led  back  by  them  to  the  literature  itself,  it  is  he  that  will  be 
the  real  judge  of  my  findings .  He  will  turn  away,  very  properly, 
from  whatever  seems  an  unearthing  of  dead  bones.  But  I 
have  tried  to  be  on  guard  against  the  treacherous  glow  that  is 
felt  by  the  mere  excavator,  and  to  admit  nothing  that  has 
failed  to  give  me  pleasure  or  entertainment,  or  to  inspire  a 
living  interest,  or  at  any  rate  an  active  distaste. 

Another  motto,  indeed,  was  suggested  by  Goethe's  x  remark  to 
Crabb  Robinson  : — 

I  do  hate  the  Egyptians  and  all  that  are  connected  with  them. 
I  am  glad  that  I  have  something  to  hate,  otherwise  one  is  in  danger 
of  falling  into  the  dull  liberal  habit  of  finding  all  things  tolerable  and 
good  in  their  place,  and  that  is  the  ruin  of  all  good  sentiments. 

To-day  that  sounds  too  like  the  wrong  kind  of  morning 
hymn  ;  nor  have  I  written  in  such  a  spirit.  Still,  those  of  us 
who  went  to  college  about  1880,  who  thought  that  we  were 
beginning  to  think,  and  who  either  found  in  the  Victorian 
authors  our  mental  food  and  vital  air,  or  else  sharply  rejected 
what  they  offered  us — we  cannot  speak  of  them  remotely,  as 
if  they  were  three  centuries  old.  Shall  we  deny  our  fathers, 
who  begat  us  ?  Somebody,  within  twenty  years  or  less,  will 
rewrite  the  whole  story  with  exemplary  coolness.  So  the 
attempt  may  as  well  be  made,  while  yet  there  is  time,  by  any 
one  who  remembers  those  likes  and  dislikes.  I  speak  of  artistic, 
not  of  political  or  doctrinal  preferences.     Not  that  the  reader 


vi  PREFACE 

will  find  that  these  latter  are  concealed  ;  if  lie  cares,  he  will 
easily  see  where  the  writer's  bias  lies,  in  the  field  of  '  applied 
literature.'  But  I  for  one  would  sooner,  any  time,  read  a  good 
book  on  what  I  think  the  wrong  side,  than  a  bad  one  on  my  own. 
Also  the  artistic  judgement  itself,  after  so  many  decades, 
ought  to  have  had  time  to  settle  ;  and  the  artistic  conscience 
I  have  tried  to  preserve.  This,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  is  not  a  '  dull 
liberal  habit  of  mind.' 

As  the  nineteenth  century  goes  on,  our  literature  is  seen  to 
be  more  and  more  '  strangled  with  its  waste  fertility.'  Most  of 
the  good  authors  are  disconcertingly  copious  ;  the  good  things 
in  the  lesser  ones  are  buried  away  ;  and  there  is  a  huge  mass  of 
production  lying  on  the  doubtful  fringe.  No  one  man  can  ever 
read  all  this,  no  one  will  ever  try.  A.  syndicate  of  scholars, 
however,  has  done  it  ;  and  the  proof  is  in  that  gallant  and 
fruitful  enterprise,  the  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature, 
the  last  volumes  of  which  appeared  while  this  book  was  being 
made.  To  them  I  am  naturally  deep  in  debt,  not  only  for  in- 
formation and  suggestion  but  for  relief.  The  Cambridge 
bibliographies  have  saved  me  from  overloading  the  notes,  which 
are  only  in  the  nature  of  '  first  aid.'  Also  I  have  forborne, 
save  here  and  there,  to  enter  the  field  of  purely  scientific, 
or  educational,  writing  ;  or  to  record  the  advance  of  scholar- 
ship, or  the  literature  of  travel,  or  the  production  of  the  Empire 
overseas.  All  these  things  will  be  found  in  the  great  syndicate- 
history,  which  at  many  a  point  is  a  record  of  thought  and 
knowledge  as  well  as  of  letters.  At  the  same  time,  there  is 
always  room  for  a  single-handed  venture  with  a  specific  aim. 
What  may  be  done  in  that  kind  is  evident  from  a  work  like 
Professor  Hugh  Walker's  Victorian  Literature,  which  any 
student  of  the  same  period  must  salute.  Mr.  Walker's  scheme 
and  outlook  differ  from  mine,  but  I  have  read  him  with  all  the 
more  advantage  for  that. 

Many  obligations  to  other  scholars  are  stated  in  the  notes. 
To  one  of  these,  Professor  George  Saints  bury,  I  once  more  give 
many  thanks  for  the  unremitting  kindness  with  which  he  has 
read  proofs  and  made  suggestions  of  price.  Dr.  John  Sampson 
has  been  good  enough  to  read  several  chapters,  including 
the  pages  on  Borrow,  and  to  give  valued  counsel.  Professor 
C.  H.  Firth,  Professor  J.  G.  Robertson,  and  other  friends  have 
been  ready  with  help  in  difficulty.  Whatever  errors  may 
remain  are  the  author's  own.  O.E. 

Liverpool,  July  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
TRANSITION 

PAGE 

I.  Position  of  literature  about  1S32  ;  mortality  amongst  authors.  The 
interregnum  in  poetry  ;  transition  in  the  novel         ....  1 

II.  Relation  of  social  and  political  movement  to  letters  ;  its  inspiration 
exceptional  after  all,  in  respect  of  '  pure'  literature  ...  3 

III.  '  Pure  '  and  '  applied  '  literature  distinguished.  The  balance 
between  them,  the  great  feature  of  this  period  ....  4 

IV.  Great  and  rapid  development  of  the  art  of  prose,  partly  due  to  the 
calls  of  thought  and  speculation,  but  also  to  that  of  the  imagination 
itself.  The  achievement  of  prose  in  this  period  even  greater  than  that  of 
verse      ..........  6 

CHAPTER  II 
THOMAS  CARLYLE 

I.  Froude's  picture,  how  to  be  corrected.  Carlyle's  temper ;  some 
limitations  mentioned.     Dominant  position  in  literature  of  the  time  .  8 

II.  First  stage  of  authorship,  1823-36  :  essays,  reviews,  work  in  periodi- 
cals. Revelation  of  German  thought  and  writing  to  the  English  public. 
The  romantics ;  and  Goethe.  Carlyle  and  philosophy ;  attitude  to 
eighteenth  century.  Debt  to  the  Germans :  view  of  society,  and  of 
history  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .11 

III.  Characteristics:  conceptions  of  the  ' inner  light,' of  the  transience 
of  evil,  and  of  the  legacy  of  the  past.     Sartor,  possible  origins  ;  meaning 

of 'clothes';  doctrine  of  labour ;  personal  confessions         .  .  .14 

IV.  Works,  1837-51.  The  French  Revolution  :  what  Carlyle  ignored ; 
characteristic  power,  and  historic  service,  of  the  book.     Method  compared 

with  that  of  The  Dynasts         .......         18 

V.  CromiceU's  Letters  and  Speeches.:  misconceptions  removed  ;  editorial 
service.     Revelation  of  the  Puritans  ;  disparagement  of  royalists  .  .         20 

VI.  Frederick  the  Great  :  burdensome  plan  ;  conception  of  Frederick  ; 
humorous  delineation,  and  comedy  of  manners.  Change  of  style  ; 
variety  of  workmanship  .......         22 

VII.  Lectures  on  Heroes  :  notion  of  the  '  hero  ' ;  debt  to  Fichte  ;  range 
of  sympathy.  Past  and  Present:  outlook  on  own  time.  Chartism  and 
Latter-day  Pamphlet*  ;  temporary  failure  of  Carlyle's  faith.     Later  sallies 

on  affairs.     Life  of  Sterling  ;  portraits  of  persons      .  .  .  .24 

VIII.  Carlyle's  misconception  of  history,  and  of  the  work  of  the  mass 
of  mankind.     Neglect  of  secondary  causes,  and  of  science.     '  Right  and 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 


TAfiK 


might';  Carlyle'a  muaniug.     Canons  of  morality  for  the  State  ;  working 

of  Providence  in  history.     Carlyle  and  political  parties       .  .  .29 

IX.  Carlyle'a  talk  the  key  to  his  style.  Stages  in  mastery  of  language  : 
early  perfection,  1830-5.  Luter  perplexities  of  style ;  the  mannerisms  ; 
John  Sterling's  statement  of  them      ......         32 

X.  Hortatory  writing,  its  lifelong  nobility.  Descriptive  writing,  its 
different  manner.  Narrative  power ;  language  of  the  heart.  Physiog- 
nomies and  heads.     Carlyle'a  ideals  and  his  gift  happily  matched  .         35 

XI.  Mrs.  Carlyle.     Caroline  Fox  .  .  .  .  .39 

CHAPTER  III 
PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

I.  Absence  of  philosophers  and  philosophic  writers  of  the  first  rank. 
Some  landmarks  named.     Earlier  leaders  of  a  priori  school.  .  .        41 

II.  Sir  William  Hamilton  ;  his  lectures,  their  style  and  importance ; 
his    connexions    with    romanticism.        Mansel :      Prolegomena    Logica, 
Bampton  Lectures,  etc.     Excellence  of  his  writing.     Ferrier  :  Institutes  of 
Metaphysic ;  the  grand  manner  ......         43 

III.  J.  S.  Mill ;  five  phases  of  his  career.     His  letters     .  .  .48 

IV.  Some  influences  affecting  Mill:  early  drill,  and  emotional  reaction; 
accidia,  and  partial  cure.     Mrs.  Mill.     Carlyle  and  Mill     .  .  .49 

V.  Other  influences  :  study  of  history  ;  the  Saint-Simonians  ;  Mill 
and  Comte.  Mill's  reading  of  the  '  religion  of  humanity.'  His  private 
pen*4es  of  1854.  Later  views  ;  Three  Essays  on  Religion  ;  hypothetical 
Manicheism       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  52 

VI.  Reviews  and  articles ;    coutributions  to    Westminster,  etc.     Mill 

on  poetry.     Notices  of  Bentham,  Coleridge,  and  Grote        .  •  .54 

VII.  The  Logic,  with  the  Examination  of  Hamilton       .  .  .55 

VIII.  Politics  and  Economics  :  On  Liberty,  and  Sir  J.  F.  Stephen's 
Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity.  Subjection  of  Women  ;  Rzprcsentative 
Government ;  Political  Economy ;   Utilitarianism      .  .  .  .57 

IX.  Mill  as  a  writer.  Judicial  fairness :  contest  between  his  reason 
and  his  sensibilities  ;  its  effect  on  his  style.  Place  amongst  philosophic 
writers  of  his  own  school         .  .  .  .  .  •  .61 

X.  Alexander  Bain  :  treatises  ;  general  position  and  style.  Sir  James 
Fitzjames  Stephen        ........         62 

CHAPTER  IV 
PHILOSOPHY,  SCIENCE,  AND  LETTERS 

I.  The  growth  of  science.  Lyell,  Principles  of  Geology;  Chambers, 
Vestiges  of  Creation.    Darwin  :  his  literary  qualities,  as  observer,  describer 

and  reasoner  ;  temper  as  a  naturalist ;  Origin  of  Species,  etc  .  .         65 

II.  Herbert  Spencer :  style  and  spirit ;  titles  of  chief  works ;  great 
synthesis ;  vogue  of  his  writing  and  its  general  ambition  ;  some  of  its 
critics    ..........         <0 

III.  Some  mental  features:  Spencer  a  'preacher  of  happiness';  his 
sense  of  mystery  ;  the  unknowable.  His  Philistinism  ;  and  qualities  as  a 
writer.    Comtiam  in  Britain  :  George  Henry  Lewes  .  .  .72 


CONTENTS  ix 


PACK 


83 


IV.  Huxley  :  his  career  ;  conception  of  his  ta«k,  and  unity  of  hiB  work  75 

V.  Huxley  :  philosophical  attitude.  The  Hume  ;  '  agnosticism ' ;  the 
biblical-supernatural ;  immortality  of  the    cosmos.'     Streak  of  sympathy 

with  theology  ;  views  of  education,  and  of  politics  .  .  .  .77 

VI.  Hurley  :  his  righting,  hia  expository,  and  his  higher  style ;  poetic 
and  humorous  vein.  Clifford :  '  mind-stuff'  and  cosmic  emotion. 
Tyndall 80 

VII.  The  '  lay  religion,'  its  reactions  on  literature.  Philosophic  work 
of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen.  Henry  Sidgwick  :  Methods  of  Ethics  ;  the  haunting 
problem  of  ethics ;  questionings  of  the  Victorian  time.  Shadworth 
Hodgson,  as  man  of  letters      ....... 

VIII.  The  opposition  ;  Hegel ;  renewal  of  idealism,  and  re-vindication 
of  metaphysic.      Hutchinson  Stirling  and  others ;   the  Cairds,  Thomas 

Hill  Green,  James  Martineau,  Campbell  Fraser        .  .  .  .86 

IX.  Note  on  philosophical  styles  during  this  period  ;  and  on  some  new 
words  and  expressions,  and  their  struggle  for  existence       .  .  .89 

X.  Two  periodicals,  the  Fortnightly  Review  and  the  Nineteenth  Century: 
their  respective  aims  ;  and  that  of  the 'Metaphysical  Society'      .  .        91 

CHAPTER  V 
PHILOSOPHY,  HISTORY,  AND  LETTERS 

I.  Links  between  science  and  historical  writing ;  different  types  of 
historian.  The  philosophical  school  :  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis ; 
criticism  and  analysis.  Reconstructive  effort  of  Euckle  ;  History  of  Civili- 
zation ;  his  conception  of  the  reign  of  law  ;  style 

II.  Lecky ;  his  connexion  with  Buckle ;  History  of  Rationalism ;  and 
History  of  European  Morals.  His  method  midway  between  Buckle's  and 
Carlyle's;  miracles;  growth  of  toleration.     Lee ky's  speculative  position, 

and  impartiality  ;  his  public  .....-•         9* 

III.  Lecky:  History  of  England,  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  ;  'judicious- 
ness' ;  History  of  Ireland  ;  Democracy  and  Liberty,  and  other  works         .         99 

IV.  John  Austin.  Sir  Henry  Maine:  institutional  history;  Ancient 
Law,  and  other  works.     Maine's  style  ;  dislike  of  democracy  ;  other  works 

of  the  same  tendency    .  .  .  •  •  ■        •  •       *0_ 

V.  Walter  Bagehot :  many-sidedness  ;  some  traits  of  his  mind  ;  his  eye 
for  ideas,  affairs  and  men  ;  portraits  of  statesmen.  The  English  Con- 
stitution ;  Physics  and  Politics  ....•••       10"* 

VI.  Bagehot :  his  manner  of  criticism,  and  literary  studies  ;  on  Shake- 
speare and  others.     Philosophical  background  ;  manner  of  writing 


106 


CHAPTER  VI 
MACAULAY  AND  FROUDE 

I.  Macaulay.  general  achievement.  Stages  of  literary  life,  1824-34, 
1835-47,  1848-59 109 

II.  Macaulay 's  Life  and  Letters.  Humanism,  and  debt  to  the  ancients, 
in  point  of  lore,  style,  and  political  ideals.  Zeal  for  reform  and  toleration  ; 
temper  towards  religion  and  the  churches.     Secular  view  of  government  .       112 


x  CONTENTS 


>>Ar;e 


III.  Maeaulay's  form  of  essay,  rooted  in  reviewing,  and  also  in  oratory, 
ays  on  political  theory,  and  on  historical  subjects  .  .  .116 

IV.  Literary  essays:  on  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries;  on 
Byron  ;  and  on  Miss  Austen,  etc.        .  .  .  .  .  .118 

V.  Reaction  against  his  reputation  examined.     'Materialism.'     Speech 

on  the  government  of  India     .......       120 

VI.  History  of  England  :  history  and  fiction  :  constitutional  aspect  of 

the  task  ;  general  qualities  of  the  History      .....       122 

VII.  Construction  and  ordering  :  narrative,  description,  and  analysis. 
Imaginary  speeches  :   'characters ';  felicity  of  interludes    .  .  .       124 

VIII.  Criticisms  of  the  History  :  (1)  as  to  judgements  of  character,  and 
representations  of  fact ;  (2)  as  to  general  treatment  of  evidence,  and  build- 
ing up  of  pictures,  and  outrunning  of  authorities;  (3)  as  to  Whig 
favouritism        .........       126 

IX.  Maeaulay's  style,  natural  and  yet  mechanical:  its  'atomic'  char- 
acter. Variety  of  the  style  within  its  own  framework  ;  short  co-ordinate 
clauses,  but  formed  into  a  'musical  whole.'  Use  of  echoed  words  and 
antithesis  combined  ;  and  of  concrete  instances  in  pairs.  Purity  of  diction. 
Possible  models  ........       128 

X.  His  poetry  :  what  it  is  not ;  its  virtues,  and  '  popular '  cpiality  ;  con- 
ciseness and  distinctness  ;  lineage  of  the  Lays  ;  other  verse  .  .       131 

XI.  James  Anthony  Froude  :  early  career  ;  revolt  from  Tractarianism  ; 
Nemesis  of  Faith;  magazine  articles  .  .  .  .  .133 

XII.  Froude  :  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects,  classified;  religious  papers, 
fables,  travel  notes,  view  of  historical  composition  ;  antipathy  to  scienc«. 
English  Seamen  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .135 

XIII.  History  of  England,  1856-70  :  idea  of  the  Reformation  ;  portraits 
of  Henry  VIII.  and  of  Elizabeth.  Criticisms  and  assaults  on  the  work  ; 
Froude's  lapses  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .138 

XIV.  Froude  as  an  artist.  Strength  in  episode  ;  passages  of  argument 
and  reflection.  Music  and  cadence  in  the  History.  The  English  in  Ireland. 
Oceana,  and  other  works.     Oxford  stamp  of  his  style  ;  its  excellences        .       141 

CHAPTER  VII 
OTHER  HISTORIANS 

I.  Principle  of  selection :  grouping  .....       144 

II.  Thirlwall  :  History  of  Greece;  letters  and  tastes.  Grote :  practical 
experience;  History  of  Greece,  its  importance  ;  '  personal  life.'  Finlay  : 
works  on  Greek  history  ;  opinions  and  reflections,  and  style  .  .       144 

III.  Thomas  Arnold :  his  ecclesiastical  dream  ;  History  of  Rome  ;  his 
admiration  of  Niebuhr ;  his  dignity  of  style.  Merivale :  works  on  the 
Roman  Empire  ........       152 

IV.  Milman  :  History  of  Christianity,  and  History  of  Latin  Christianity  ; 
plan,  and  gifts.     Relationship  to  Gibbon       .....       155 

V.  Stubbs  :  Constitutional  History  of  England  ;  lectures  ;  inductive  and 
judicial  cast  of  mind  ;  portraits.  Freeman:  range  and  opinions  ;  view  of 
history  ;  Federal  Government,  History  of  Sicily,  Norman  Conquest.  Man- 
ner :  '  Teutonic  English  ' ;  habit  of  definition ;  huge  productiveness. 
J.  R.  Green :  Short  History  of  the  English  People,  and  other  works  ;  con- 
ception of  history ;  notes  on  literature ;  Stray  Studies         .  .  .       157 


CONTENTS  xi 


PACK 


VI.  Gardiner :  history  and  politics ;  philosophic  standpoint ;  equity  ; 
works  on  the  history  of  England  in  seventeenth  century  ;  Cromwell  : 
power  of  weighing  motive  :  on  toleration  ;  accurate  perspective     .  .       1G4 

VII.  Seeley:  Ecce  Homo,  and  Natural  Religion.     Criticism:  Goethe. 
Book  on  Stein.     Expansion  of  England,  and   Growth  of  British  Policy. 
Plan   and  point   of  view  ;    history   and   politics   again  ;   Seeley's   form. 
Goldwin  Smith  :    various  activities  ;  Lectures  ;  The  Empire ;  writings  in 
Canada.     Literary  studies       .......       168 

VIII.  Note  on  later  historians ;  18S0  not  a  significant  date.  Lord 
Acton  and  others.         ........       172 

IX.  Two  witnesses  of  history.  Napier  :  the  Duke's  opinion  ;  Pen- 
insular War:  classical  tinge  ;  gifts  as  military  historian  ;  Napier's  battles 
and  episodes.  Kinglake  :  Eothen ;  career  ;  History  of  the  War  in  the 
Crimea :  conflicting  verdicts ;  Kinglake's  preconceptions  ;  leisurely 
method  ;  drawbacks  of  his  style  ;  its  life  and  pointedness  .  .  .       174 


CHAPTER  VIII 
CHURCH  AND  LETTERS 

I.  Character  of  the  'movements,'  Anglo-Catholic  and  Anglo-Roman. 
Literary  origins  of  tbe  Tractarians :  romantic  poetry,  and  seventeenth- 
century  divines.  Newman  and  the  eighteenth-century  sceptics.  Ecclesi- 
astical journalism  profuse        .  .  .  .  •  •  .179 

II.  Tract*  for  the  Times :  Newman's  share.     Characteristics        .  .       182 

III.  Newman's  Anglican  sermons  :  view  of  the  natural  man  :  analytic 
habit 184 

IV.  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine :  its  place  in  contemporary 
thought;  and  in  Newman's  own  history         .  .  .  .  •       1S6 

V.  The  convert :  Newman  and  his  former  Church.  Lectures  On  the 
Difficulties  of  Anglicans  ;  The  Present  Position  of  Catholics.  The  Achilli 
business.  Change  of  style  and  temper  :  increased  floridity,  and  disposi- 
tion to  '  scratch.'     Roman  sermons     ......       187 

VI.  Newman  on  education  :  The  Idea  of  a  University  ;  attitude  to 
science,  literature,  theology,  and  life  ..... 

VII.  His  discouragement  in  1860  :  his  opportunity.  Apologia  j>ro  Vita 
Sua  :  the  forensic  side  ;  letter  on  the  death  of  Kingsley.     Emotional  basis 

of  the  argument.     Effect  on  Newman's  reputation    .  .  .  .192 

VIII.  Grammar  of  Assent:  'scepticism'  of  Newman,  its  'contingent' 
character.  Theory  of  probability;  'illative  sense,'  what  it  proves. 
Melodious  interludes    ......••       195 

IX.  Newman's  position  as  a  reasoner  ;  the  instinct  underlying  his 
'sophistry.'  His  inequality  as  an  artist;  barren  tracts,  lovely  oases. 
His  more  familiar  styles.     Purity  of  his  best  English.     Technical  range  of 

his  style  :  short  sentences  and  long  periods  .  .  .  •  .       19] 

X.  Newman's  verse  :  early  hymns  and  lyrics  ;  Dream  of  Gerontius         .       201 

XI.  Other  religious  poets:  Isaac  Williams,  Faber,  Trench,  Mason 
Neale     .  202 

XII.  W.  G.  Ward ;  Ideal  of  a  Christian  Church  ;  philosophical  and 
humorous  gifts  :  belligerent  habit       ......       204 


190 


xii  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


XIII.  Pusey.  J.  B.  Mozley.  Dean  Church  :  historical  works  on  Dante, 
Bacon,  Spenser  ;  on  the  Oxford  Movement    .....       206 

XIV.  The  liberal  divines,  their  temper,  and  their  service  to  letters. 
Later  writings  of  Whately  ;  Hampden  ;  Essays  and  Reviews  .  .       208 

XV.  Maurice.  Jowett :  work  and  position  ;  theology  ;  the  Plato  and  the 
Thucydides ;  preaching.     Stanley      .  .  .  .  .  .210 

XVI.  Pattison  :  work  on  Renaissance  writers,  and  on  English  poets  ; 
style.     Note  on  Francis  Newman ;  other  names         :  214 

CHAPTER  IX 
JOHN  RUSKIN 

I.  General  note  ;  limited  aim  of  this  chapter.  Ruskin  always  an  artist ; 
and  always  a  reformer,   because  always  a  preacher.     Modem  Painters, 

vol.  i.,  its  newness,  and  main  purpose  ;  ethical  and  sectarian  tone  .       218 

II.  Earlier  life  and  first  writings.  Notation  of  natural  things.  Modem 
Painters,  vol.  ii.,  theory  of  beauty  ;  'imagination  penetrative,'  etc.  .       220 

III.  Other  writings  down  to  1860  enumerated;  growing  'change  of 
emphasis'  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .■      222 

IV.  The  Seven  Lamps,  and  their  illumination.  The  Stones  of  Venice  : 
technical  exposition  ;  chapter  on  '  the  nature  of  Gothic,'  its  drift ;  mean- 
ing of  '  naturalism '........       224 

V.  Larger  text  of  The  Stones  of  Venice  :  art  an  index  of  national  virtue, 
in  what  sense;  Ruskin's  'short  cuts.'  Blind  attack  on  the  later  Re- 
naissance ;  Ruskin's  glory  to  have  vindicated  the  art  of  the  '  ages  of  faith  '      225 

VI.  Modern  Painters,  vol.  iii.,  'Of  many  things' :  the  grand  style  ;  true 
and  false  fiuish  ;  history  of  the  feeling  for  landscape.  Vols.  iv.  and  v.  : 
'science  of  the  aspects'  of  mountains,  leaves,  and  clouds;  endless  ex- 
cursions, exemplified.     Halt,  in  order  to  discuss  —  ...       227 

VII.  (1)  Ruskin's  religious  attitude:  early  Protestantism,  how  far 
dropped ;  Construction  ofSheepfolds ;  central  period,  appeals  to  the  agnostic ; 
later  '  Catholicity ' ;  few  dogmas,  but  held  with  a  'compensating  inten- 
sity '  ;  influence  of  Carlyle.     (2)  ethical  view  of  art ;  straining  of  the  term 

'  noble' ;  Ruskin's  view  of  subject  and  technique,  often  misread     .  .       230 

VIII.  (3)  Ruskin's  style,  and  its  varieties.  Wherein  the  central  prose 
writer  of  his  time  ;  Ruskin  and  Newman.  Influence  of  the  Bible,  for  good 
and  otherwise.  Plainer,  and  more  '  Johnsonian,'  English  ;  doubling  of 
clauses    ..........       232 

IX.  The  characteristic  long  Ruskinian  sentence,  its  construction  ;  in- 
sertions of  iambic  rhythm.  Habit  of  revision  ;  search  for  the  '  vital 
word.'    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  ...  .235 

X.  Later  style  ;  its  '  plainness '  a  relative  term.  Expository  skill ; 
adaptation  of  language  to  every  idea  and  feeling ;  '  pure  crystalline 
structure'  .........       238 

XL  Economic  crusade,  its  anticipations.  Carlyle  and  Ruskin.  Unto 
This  Last  and  Munera  Pulveris  ;  their  reception.  Rejection  of  the  '  mer- 
cantile economy ' ;  definition  of  wealth.  Ruskin  and  the  condition  of 
England  ;  instances  of  his  foresight    ......       239 

XII.  Munera  Pulveris.  Sesame  and  Lilies,  The  Ethics  of  the  Dust,  The 
Crown  of  Wild  Olive;  Ruskin's  thought  and  Btyle  at  their  fulness  of 
power.     ■  The  mystery  of  life  and  its  arts  '     .  .  .  .  .       242 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PAOE 

XIII.  Remaining  works,  their  general  grouping :  studies  of  nature ; 
criticism  and  teaching  of  fine  art ;  The  Pleasures  of- England  ;  mythology  ; 
writings  on  literature  :  Scott.  Dante,  etc.       .....       244 

XIV.  Fors  Clavigera  ;  its  medley  of  themes  ;  Ruskin's  defence  of  its 
method  ;  its  value  as  a  contribution  to  thought :  its  quality  of  style  ;  and 

the  light  it  throws  on  Ruskin.     Prater  ita      .....       247 

CHAPTER  X 
EARLIER  CRITICS  ;  AND  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

I.  The  ebb  of  criticism,  1830-40.  Stray  names  :  Elwin,  Hayward,  etc. 
Keble :  Prelections,  etc.     Brimley.     Dallas,  The  Gay  Science  .  .       250 

II.  Matthew  Arnold  :  revolt  against  romanticism  ;  formative  influences. 

His  purpose,  its  advantages  and  penalties      .....       254 

III.  Arnold  :    chronology  of  works  ;    connexion  between  his  criticism 

and  his  verse.     Heroic  episodes  :  Sohrab  and  Rustum.     Empedocles  on  Etna      257 

IV.  Arnold  :  elegies  ;  '  associative  *  poems  ;  lyrics  ;  sonnets         .  .       260 

V.  Arnold:  his  felicity  of  nature :  his  English  scenery     .  .  .       263 

VI.  Arnold  :  critical  canons.  Need  of  design  in  poetry  ;  application  of 
the  test  to  verse  of  this  period.  The  grand  style  :  applications.  Lectures 
on  Translating  Homer;  Ferguson  quoted.  Use  of  test  passages;  its 
drawback  .........       264 

VII.  '  Criticism  of  life.'  Lectures  on  Celtic  Literature.  Essays  in  Criti- 
cism ;  first  series.  Federal  ideal  of  literature.  Arnold  and  French 
writers    ..........       268 

VIII.  Other  criticisms  and  reviews  ;  view  of  Shelley,  why  freakish. 
Passage  on  Sainte-Beuve  .  .  .  .  .  .  .271 

IX.  Writings  on  religion :  formula1,  method,  temper.  The  reformed 
church.  Crdture  and  Anarchy,  etc.  Writings  on  education,  and  on 
politics  ..........       274 

X.  Matthe  w  Arnold :  summary       ......       277 

CHAPTER  XI 
WALTER  PATER  AND  OTHER  CRITICS 

I.  Pater  :  his  position  ;  titles  of  works  ;  upbringing         .  .  .       279 

II.  Pater  :  code  and  canons  ;  '  culture. '  The  creed  of  pleasure,  how 
misconstrued  :  application  in  cases  of  Shakespeare  and  Wordsworth  .       2S0 

III.  Pater  :  his  '  poetic ' ;  poetry  and  other  arts.  The  mot  juste. 
Attitude  to  speculation  that  of  an  interpreter  ....       282 

IV.  Pater  :  Studies  in  the  Renaissance  ;  their  partial  character.  Appre- 
ciations: Shakespeare  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne.     '  Classical '  and  '  romantic  '       284 

V.  Pater  :  Marius  the  Epicurean.     Gaston  de  Latour,  etc.  .  .       287 

VI.  Pater  :  Greek  Studies ;  and  book  on  Plato ;  view  of  myth  and 
symbol  ..........       288 

VII.  Pater's  prose  :  search  for  vocabulary  ;  reserve;  rhythm  and  move- 
ment.    Over-elaboration ;  and  contrasted  simplicity  .  .  .       290 

VIII.  Addington  Symonds  :  Greek  Poets  ;  History  of  the  Italian  Renais- 
sance ;  other  works  ;  maladie  du  siecle  .....       292 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAon 

IX.  Sir   Leslie    Stephen ;    works   and    ventures.       Literary   ancestry. 

Critical  bent  and  habit.     Ethical  creed.     Judgements  on  writers  ;  genius 

for  biography   .........       294 

X.  Other  critics  :    professors,  preachers,  scholars.     Dowden,  Stopford 
Brooke.     Masson,  Minto.     Furnivall.     Hutton        ....      297 


CHAPTER  XII 
MISCELLANEOUS  PROSE 

I.  Need  for  selection.  The  essayists  :  Guesses  at  Truth  ;  J.  C.  Hare. 
Hinton.     Greg         .  ......       301 

II.  Essayists :  Sir  Arthur  Helps.  Hamerton.  Dr.  John  Brown. 
Jefferies  .........       303 

III.  Samuel  Butler  :  Erewhon,  and  its  sequel.  Travel  notes.  Scientific 
controversies.     Chief  speculative  ideas.     Philosophy  of  life.     The  Way  of 

All  Flesh.     Style  ;  aphorism"  .......       306 

IV.  Some  autobiographies  :  Haydon's  ;  Mitchel's  Jail  Journal ;  Harriet 
Martineau's  Autobiography,  and  her  other  works.     Forster's  biographies. 

The  Oreville  Memoirs  ........       310 

V.  Some  travellers  :  Burton.  W.  G.  Palgrave.  Speke,  and  some  other 
African  explorers ;  Winwood  Reade.  Warburton.  Curzon.  Lord 
Dufferin.     Sir  Charles  Dilke  .......       315 

VI.  Borrow:  his  writings  a  new  species.     The  Bible  in  Spain    .  .       319 

VII.  Borrow :  Lavengro,  The  Romany  Rye,  Wild  Wales  .  .       322 

VIII.  Borrow :   his  English  ;   devices  ;    his  ideal  of  narrative  ;   thrift 

and  concision  ;  echoing  and  repercussion  of  wordB.     Borrow's  other  works      325 


CHAPTER  XIII 

TENNYSON 

I.  Alfred  Tennyson,  in  1833  the  '  true  heir ';  position  of  poetry  at  the 
time.  Development  as  an  artist  up  to  1842  ;  instinct  to  '  pack '  his 
material.     Various  species  of  simplicity         .....       330 

II.  Sketch  of  his  career  as  a  poet.  Place  in  it  of  the  Poems  of  1842  ; 
the  central  year,  1850,  In  Memoriam  ;  Tennyson's  masterpiece  Maud, 
1855.     Volume  of  1864,  Enoch  Arden,  etc.     Later  works  ;  freshness  in  old 

age.     Course  of  reputation      .......       332 

III.  The  antique  :  Hellenic  poems  ;  the  dramatic  monologue,  Ulysses, 
Tiresias,  etc.  ;  Lucretius.  Lyrics  on  classical  subjects  :  Lines  to  Virgil ; 
metrical  experiments    ........       335 

IV.  The  English  idyll  :  origins  ;  medley  of  styles  for  which  blank  verse 

is  used  ;  the  '  minimum' style.     Enoch  Arden  and  The  Princess     .  .       339 

V.  Speculative  verse,  from  The  Two  Voices  to  The  Ancient  Sage.  New 
mastery  of  philosophical  poetry.  In  Memoriam  :  in  arrangement  and 
composition,  compared  with  Shakespeare's  Sonnets ;  course  of  thought  in 

the  poem  ;  effect  of  the  metre  and  of  its  varieties     ....       342 

VI.  Tennyson's  position  in  the  religious  speculation  of  his  time  ;  '  right 
centre.'    States  of  vision  ;  '  the  Nameless'  ;  The  Ancient  Sage       .  .      346 


CONTENTS  xv 

PAOE 

VII.  Dramatic  monologues :  Lucretius.  Maud,  its  construction  ;  the 
speaker  a  '  decadent' ;  finale  of  the  poem      .  ...  .       348 

VIII.  Arthurian  poems  :  Morte  d' Arthur.  Idylls  of  the  King  :  Malory 
overlaid  with  (1)  ornament,  (2)  symbolism.  Order  of  production,  and 
consequent  embarrassments.  Tennyson  and  Morris.  Allegoric  and 
mystical  bearings.     Qualities  and  deficiencies  of  the  Idylls  .  .       350 

IX.  Lyric :  sixty  years  of  production.  Fast  and  slow  lyrics ;  verbal 
quality.     Natural  and  elaborated  song  .  .  .  .  .       355 

X.  Dramas:  '  history  plays ' ;  romantic  plays       ....       357 

XI.  Management  of  words :  use  of  the  kenning ;  patient  brooding  on 
words,  contrasted  with  '  happy  gambling '  with  them.  Truth  and  obser- 
vation lying  behind  Tennyson's  felicities.     His  blank  verse  ;  its  varieties. 

His  general  position      ........       358 

XII.  Charles  Tennyson  (Tennyson  Turner) :  his  sonnets,  his  preferences  ; 

the  wolds  ;  small  themes,  and  larger  ones.     Frederick  Tennyson    .  .       361 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  BROWNINGS 

I.  Robert  Browning  :    his  social  aspect  and  normality,  wherein  signi- 
ficant of  his  talent ;  love  of  history,  fact,  legend ;   and    a  corresponding 
keeping  and  likelihood  in  his  inventions.     Six  phases  of  his  poetry  out- 
lined      ..........       364 

II.   1833-40  :  long  imperfect  poems,  with  kindred  aims  :  Pauline  and 
the  Essay  (1852)  on  Shelley  ;  Paracelsus  ;  Sordello  .  .  .  .       366 

III.  1841-6  ;  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  containing  seven  plays  ;  note  on 
these,  especially  on  Pippa  Passes       ......       368 

IV.  1842,  1845  ;  Nos.  iii.  and  vii.  of  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  containing 
shorter  pieces;  Browning's  true  field  here;  'the  right  shapes.'  Nar- 
ratives :  The  Glove.  Romantic  rebelliousness.  Element  of  the  gro- 
tesque ;  its  varieties.     Lyric  gift       ......       370 

V.  1850  :  Christmas- Eve  and  Easter-Day,  Browning's  principal  con- 
fession of  faith  .........       373 

VI.  1855  :  Men  and  Women  (i.e.  the  •  fifty'  so  first  named).  The  poet's 
later  classification.  The  eccentric  again.  Love  poetry,  its  varieties  and 
handicraft.  The  '  men  and  women  '  as  later  defined  :  dramatic  mono- 
logue, usually  in  blank  verse  .......       374 

VII.  1864  :  Dramatis  Persona' ;  a  new  strain  ;  the  verse  of  frustrated 
love.  Poems  with  theses  :  Gold  Hair  and  others  criticised.  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra       ..........       378 

VIII.  1868-9:  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  Nature  of  the  'book';  how 
used.     The  six   'mundane'  speeches;  the  fire  self-defences.     Character 

and  position  of  the  poem  .......       380 

IX.  1871-8:  more  apologias  at  length  :  Hohenstiel-Schwangau,  Fifine  at 
the  Fair,  Red  Cotton  Night-Gap  Country,  Inn  Album.  Disquisition  and 
fiction  in  verse,  poetry  intermittent  ......       384 

X.  Also  1871-8  :  refreshment  of  Greek  themes  :  Balaustion,  etc.     Also 

La  Sai&iaz,  etc.  ........       386 

XI.  1879-1880:    Dramatic    Idyls;    a   new    form    of    the    'dramatic 


xvi  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


romance.'     The  four  last  volumes  briefly  noted  :  Ferishtah's  Fancies  to 
.4so/anrfo(1890)  ........       388 

XII.  Browning's  dealings  with  words:  love  of  monosyllables;  false 
stresses;  metrical  mastery  nevertheless.  His  grammar;  an  example  ;  its 
justification       .....■•••       391 

XIII.  His  non-poetical  element.  Philosophic  verse  ;  creation  of  char- 
acters and  types  ;  power  greatest  in  lyric.  His  men  and  women.  Neutral 
ground  between  prose  and  verse.     Browning's  quality  .  .  .       394 

XIV.  Mrs.  Browning  :  life  and  literary  record  ;  faults  to  be  expected    .       397 

XV.  Nature  ;  and  the  Greek  poets.     False  rhymes  .  .  .       399 

XVI.  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  Casa  Guidi  Windows,  Aurora  Leigh        402 

Notes  .....-•••      +05 


CHAPTER  I 
TRANSITION 


During  the  ten  years  before  the  accession  of  the  Queen  many 

of  the  Old  Guard  of  literature  had  died,  or  had  fallen  silent,  or 

had  continued  speaking  to  little  purpose.     Blake  lived  on  till 

1827,  noticed  only  by  the  few  ;    Hazlitt  till  1830,  keeping  his 

blade  well  sharpened,  but  mostly  musing  on  his  old  books 

and  his  vanished  youth.     As  it  chanced,  there  was  a  mortality 

amongst  writers  in  the  year  of  the  middle-class  Reform  Act, 

1832.     Scott  died,  still  holding  the  pen  ;    Crabbe  died,  who 

had  pleased  a  new  generation  with  his  rhymed  stories  in  the 

older  style  ;    Bentham  too  died,  and  Mackintosh,  who  count 

for  less  in  literature.     Coleridge  and  Lamb  followed  two  years 

afterwards.     Several  of  the  elders  remained,  including  Southey, 

whose  best  prose  lay  behind  him  and  whose  verse  faded  during 

his  lifetime.    Wordsworth  was  to  survive,  as  Laureate,  until 

1850,  watching  his  countrymen  slowly  travel  towards  his  own 

estimate  of  his  poetic  merits,  and  writing  more  verse,  in  which 

flashes  of  the  old  character  may  still  be  found.     De  Quincey 

and  Landor,  in  1830,  are  in  mid -career  ;    the  date  is  of  no 

mark  in  their  record  ;  The  English  Mail-Coach  (1849)  and  The 

Hellenics  (1846)  are  still  to  come  ;  but  the  work  of  both  writers 

originates  in  the  age  of  romance,  and  has  been  described  in  a 

former  Survey.     They  are  not  touched  by  the  art  or  thought 

of  the  period  which  is  called  Victorian  ;    nor  do  they  greatly 

affect  it,  though  the  debt  of  '  the  youngest  to  the  oldest  singer 

that  England  bore  '  is  not  to  be  forgotten  (see  Ch.  xvn.). 

The  years  1830  to  1835  are,  therefore,  a  real  date  in  English 
literature.  But  the  new  spirit  is  sooner  to  be  traced,  and 
appears  more  abruptly,  in  poetry  and  fiction  than  in  the  fields 
of  speculation,  historical  writing,  and  criticism.  In  poetry 
the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  is  felt  during  the  years  between  the 
death  of  Byron  (1824)  and  Tennyson's  volumes  of  1830  and 
1833.  Darley,  Beddoes,  and  their  few  peers  could  not  aspire 
to  the  position  that  Tennyson  and  Browning  were  presently 

VOL.  I.  a 


2  TRANSITION 

to  deserve.  The  other  poets  of  the  transition  are  noted  below 
(Ch.  xviii.).  These  two  we  can  see  marching  together  almost 
evenly  in  expansion  of  power,  though  not  in  growth  of  popu- 
larity. In  1842  came  Ulysses  and  Morte  d 'Arthur,  and  also 
the  third  volume  of  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  containing  My 
Last  Duchess  and  Cristina  ;  The  Lotos-Eaters  and  Paracelsus 
appeared  long  before.  Afterwards  the  new  poets  multiply  ;  in 
1848  was  published  The  Strayed  Reveller  ;  and  the  next  phase 
begins  in  1850  with  The  Germ.  With  Rossetti  and  his  poetic 
brethren  comes  a  change.  The  spiritual  and  ethical  impulse, 
so  markedly  dominant  in  Tennyson,  Browning,  and  Matthew 
Arnold,  takes  new  forms  ;  it  is  still  deep  and  strong,  but  it 
becomes  freer,  and  proclaims  itself  less  insistently,  being  now 
better  harmonised  with  the  requirements  of  poetic  beauty  ; 
and  the  artistic  result  is  less  marred  by  preaching.  This  is 
said,  of  course,  without  prejudice  to  Tennyson's  youthful, 
purely  beautiful,  and  disinterested  pieces,  which  inspired  the 
so-called  '  Pre-Raphaelites  '  themselves.  But  the  nature  of 
this  change  will  appear  more  fully  in  the  sequel,  where  the 
multitude  of  greater  and  lesser  poets  who  throw  light  upon  it 
wall  also  be  described  (Chs.  xv.-xix.). 

In  fiction,  the  point  of  departure  is  not  less  clearly  marked 
by  the  appearance  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray  on  the  eve  of  the 
new  reign.  The  transition  from  the  old  style  of  novel  to  the 
new  will  be  indicated  (Ch.  xx.)  ;  and  this  chronicle  ought  to 
bring  home  the  change  which  also  comes  over  the  spirit  of 
fiction  during  the  second  quarter  of  the  century.  It  is  in  part 
a  change  in  the  scene  and  the  code  of  manners  which  the 
novelist  depicts  ;  and  in  part  a  refining  of  workmanship,  a 
greater  delicacy  of  nerve,  and  a  lowering  of  the  magnificent 
hard  high  spirits  that  we  find  in  the  earlier  wits.  The  differ- 
ence between  Pickwick  and  Copperfield,  or  between  The  Yellow- 
plush  Papers  and  Esmond,  is  not  merely  that  the  writers  have 
grown  older  ;  it  means  that  the  public  has  grown  different, 
and  wants  different  wares.  The  advent  of  the  women  novelists 
hastened  this  change,  though  the  works  of  the  Haworth  sisters, 
which  began  to  appear  in  1847,  may  seem  an  exception  ;  but 
the  roughness  and  frankness  in  Jane  Eyre  and  Wuthering 
Heights  are  not  those  of  Marryat  and  his  companions,  and  are 
due  to  other  causes.  George  Eliot  did  not  appear  as  a  novelist 
until  1858,  nor  did  George  Meredith  ;  but  I  will  not  anticipate 
their  story,  or  that  of  their  contemporary  Trollope,  except  to 
say  that  the  novel  now  rapidly  overran  and  revealed  one 
region  after  another,  geographical  and  social,  of  the  map  of 


STAGES  OF  POETRY  AND  FICTION  3 

England,  filling  up  many  of  the  blank  spaces  left  by  the  great 
eighteenth-century  inventors  :  the  north  country,  the  west 
country,  Shakespeare's  country,  the  Thames,  the  Surrey  woods, 
old  London.  Put  them  all  together,  and  the  result  is  a  kind 
of  Poly.-Olbion,  or  'description  of  England.'  Local  fiction  is 
certainly  one  of  the  great  products  of  the  time,  but  the  poets 
also  do  their  part,  from  Matthew  Arnold  to  William  Barnes. 


II 

This  noble  body  of  poetry  and  fiction  has  been  a  rich  quarry 
for  the  historians  of  politics,  of  social  movements,  of  thought, 
and  even  of  theology.  The  discontent,  the  reforming  passion, 
and  the  intellectual  stir  of  the  time  overflow,  beyond  all 
precedent,  into  inventive  art  ;  they  extend  the  artist's  terri- 
tory ;  they  supply  him  with  scenes,  characters,  and  ideas, 
and  with  force  and  flame  and  colour  ;  they  prompt  him  to 
invent  new  literary  forms,  like  that  of  Past  and  Present  ;  they 
may  be  the  mainspring  of  whole  long  compositions.  They 
may,  and  often  they  do,  warp  his  art,  by  tempting  him  to 
preach  and  argue  ;  they  may  seduce  the  poet  into  the  pride  of 
rhetoric  ('  by  that  sin  fell  the  angels  '),  or  the  novelist,  who 
is  not  content  to  delineate,  into  disquisition.  Yet  the  '  con- 
dition-of-England-question,'  as  Carlyle  uncouthly  called  it, 
and  the  European  movement,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity, 
are,  on  the  whole,  good  for  literature,  and  put  blood  into  its 
veins.  Else  we  should  never  have  had  Sybil,  or  Yeast,  or 
North  and  South.  Oliver  Twist  without  the  Poor  Law,  and 
Maud  without  the  Crimean  War,  what  would  they  have  been  ? 
The  Italian  struggle  produced  Songs  Before  Sunrise  and  Vittoria. 
Such  literature,  besides  being  good  in  itself,  forms  an  indis- 
pensable document,  and  has  been  the  theme  of  excellent 
treatises.  Likewise  In  Memoriam,  and  Easter  Day,  and  The 
Dream  of  Gerontius,  and  also  Hertha  and  The  City  of  Dreadful 
Night,  fall  into  their  places,  higher  or  lower,  in  the  chronicle 
of  contemporary  thought  ;  they  are  a  reflex  in  art  of  the 
intellectual  stir  of  the  time,  or  rather  an  overflow  from  it  ; 
and,  whatever  their  substantial  value  to  thought,  they  are  at 
any  rate  thought  which  has  become  alive,  because  it  is  quickened 
by  passion  and  dream  and  fancy  into  form.  But  to  so 
familiar  a  text,  on  which  it  is  not  the  aim  of  this  work  to 
enlarge,  one  warning  may  be  attached. 

If  we  stand  back  a  little,  as  it  may  be  high  time  now  to  do, 
and  regard  the  whole  mass  of  poetry  and  fiction  produced  during 


4  TRANSITION 

the  fifty  years,  we  see,  in  perspective,  that  all  these  excite- 
ments, indignations,  ideals,  and  speculations  count  for  less  to 
pure  literature  than  might  be  expected.  Their  inspiration  is 
exceptional,  and  in  poetry  it  is  more  exceptional  than  in 
fiction.  Most  of  Browning,  of  Rossetti,  of  Miss  Rossetti,  even 
of  Matthew  Arnold  ;  most  of  Thackeray,  of  the  Brontes,  and 
of  Trollope  ;  and  much  of  the  best  of  Tennyson,  of  Dickens, 
of  George  Meredith,  of  William  Morris,  is  untouched  by  any 
such  influences  at  all,  and  is  the  better  for  being  thus  un- 
touched. There  is,  it  is  true,  a  good  deal  of  what  may  be 
called  perplexed  poetry  like  Clough's  Dipsychus,  or  Browning's 
La  Satsiaz  ;  but  it  is  a  small  fraction  of  the  whole  ;  and  how 
little  of  it  is  likely  to  live  !  We  think  first  of  the  lines  To 
Virgil,  not  of  Locksley  Hall  Twenty  Years  After,  just  as  we 
think  first  of  Pip  and  Pickwick,  not  of  the  Circumlocution 
Office  ;  of  Amyas  Leigh  rather  than  of  Alton  Locke  ;  of  Mrs. 
Poyser,  not  of  '  Felix  Holt  the  Radical '  ;  of  Reade's  mad- 
house fights  because  they  are  fights,  and  not  as  illustrations  of 
the  bad  old  lunacy  laws.  The  truth  is  that  vexed  questions 
only  inspire  the  artist  by  accident.  The  attraction  may  come 
to  him  from  the  Greek  world,  or  from  the  Middle  Ages,  or 
from  the  Renaissance,  or  from  the  age  of  Anne  ;  or  it  may  come 
simply  from  the  tragedy  and  farce  of  life,  or  from  the  wish  to 
paint  old  corners  of  England  which  have  never  been  ruffled 
by  ideas,  and  whose  sorry  side  has  never  been  noticed  by  the 
reformer.  And  very  few,  in  proportion,  out  of  the  vast  crowd 
of  characters  who  live  and  move  in  the  novel,  are  touched  by 
the  political  or  religious  or  philosophic  questionings  of  the 
time.  Some,  perhaps,  and  these  mostly  dummies,  in  the  pages 
of  Charles  Kingsley  unci  George  Eliot.  That,  of  course,  is  true 
enough  to  life. 

m 

These  remarks  refer  to  pure  literature,  or  creative  art,  of 
which  poetry  and  fiction  are  the  principal  species  ;  for  the 
drama,  in  the  period  before  us,  hardly  counts.  But  the  scene 
is  different  indeed  when  we  step  out  of  that  circle  into  the 
vaguer  and  vaster  tract  of  '  applied  literature.'  I  will  with- 
draw this  inelegant  phrase  as  soon  as  a  better  one  can  be  pro- 
duced ;  at  any  rate  it  may  call  for  explanation.  Pure  litera- 
ture, which  includes,  besides  the  species  just  mentioned,  the 
prose  meditation  or  fantasia  and  the  irresponsible  essay, 
creates,  or  exhibits,  or  simply  muses  and  converses  ;  it  does 
not  strive,  or  seek  to  convince,  or  to  harry  us  into  good  be- 


PURE  AND  APPLIED  LITERATURE  5 

haviour  (except  by  the  way),  or  to  give  even  the  most  valuable 
information,  or  to  swell  the  sum  of  knowledge,  or  to  make  a 
system.  Applied  literature  does  all  these  things  :  its  chief 
departments  are  philosophy,  science,  theology,  history,  affairs, 
and  scholarship.  Its  aim  is  to  establish  truth  of  fact,  or  truth 
of  law,  or  to  influence  action  directly.  Such  a  description,  it 
will  be  seen,  covers  more  ground  than  De  Quincey's  '  literature 
of  knowledge,'  which  he  contrasts  with  that  of  '  power.'  Now 
applied,  like  pure  literature,  can  only  survive  by  virtue  of  its 
form,  and  is  only  literature  at  all  just  in  so  far  as  it  possesses 
form.  But  its  material  and  spirit  are  different  from  those  of 
pure  literature,  and  more  than  one  factor  highly  disturbing  to 
the  critic  is  thereby  introduced.  Disturbing,  for  one  thing, 
because  there  is  plenty  of  debateable  ground  between  the  two 
realms,  as  we  see  in  Plato's  dialogues,  or  in  Cartyle's  French 
Revolution  ;  and,  for  another,  because  the  principle  of  selec- 
tion and  judgment  in  this  field  is  especially  difficult.  A  poem 
or  story  is  good,  or  less  good,  or  bad,  as  such — as  a  piece  of 
art.  But  an  historical  or  philosophical  work  may  be  priceless 
intellectually,  and  yet  be  formless  and  outside  literature 
altogether.  Or  again,  it  may  be  well  shaped  and  written,  and 
eloquent  too,  and  yet  it  is  rejected  of  thought,  or  is  of  no 
account  to  the  historian  of  thought.  There  is  no  end  to  such 
problems  in  a  survey  like  the  present  one  ;  but  they  are  in  the 
nature  of  things,  and  not  the  fault  of  the  critic.  His  only 
safe  course  is  to  hold  fast  to  the  artistic  canon  ;  not  to  pretend 
to  be  writing  a  history  of  thought  or  of  knowledge,  still  less 
to  figure  as  expertly  judging  the  conceptions  of  Darwin  or  the 
facts  of  Macaulay.  He  may,  however,  speak  of  the  connexions 
of  these  writers  and  their  works  with  the  art  of  literature  :  a 
subject  which  the  professed  historian  and  philosopher  commonly 
slight  or  shelve  in  a  parenthesis,  but  the  neglect  of  which  is 
an  injustice,  seeing  that  to  write  well  adds  to  the  greatness  of 
the  greatest  thinker.  At  the  same  time,  the  critic  must  mark, 
to  the  best  of  his  power,  the  place  of  each  writer  in  the  big 
complex  pattern,  by  the  use  of  due  emphasis,  selection,  and 
grouping. 

Such,  at  any  rate,  is  the  aim  of  the  twelve  chapters  that 
follow.  They  are  mostly  occupied  with  applied  literature, 
which  in  the  nineteenth  century,  from  1830  onwards,  is  very 
ample  and  variegated.  Its  medium,  as  is  natural,  is  com- 
monly prose.  But  then  the  pure  literature  of  the  time,  whereof 
the  medium,  save  in  the  case  of  the  novel,  is  commonly  verse, 
is  also  very  ample  and  variegated.     And  this  balance  between 


6  TRANSITION 

pure  and  applied  literature  is  the  great  feature  of  the  period. 
I  will  return  to  this  point  at  the  end  of  the  book,  when  the 
tale  has  been  told.  During  the  first  half  of  the  English  Re- 
naissance, down  to  the  death  of  Shakespeare,  poetry,  despite 
the  presence  of  Hooker  and  Bacon,  overweighed  prose.  During 
its  second  half,  lasting  down  to  the  Restoration,  prose,  despite 
the  presence  of  Milton,  overweighed  poetry*  The  hundred 
years  that  followed  the  Restoration  were  an  age  of  secondary 
verse,  of  classic  fiction,  and  of  magnificent  applied  prose.  After 
1780,  in  spite  of  the  survival  of  Burke,  the  applied  prose  is 
second-rate,  while  the  poetry  and  fiction  are  first-rate.  But 
after  1830  there  is  an  equality  and  balance,  not  seen  before  in 
our  history,  between  these  two  great  provinces  of  literature,  the 
applied  and  the  pure.  This  more  even  distribution  of  power 
may  be  regarded  as  some  set-off  against  the  great  deficiency 
of  the  Victorian  age,  I  mean  the  lack  of  any  poet  of  the  highest 
order. 

IV 

In  each  of  these  provinces,  moreover,  and  also  in  the  doubtful 
ground  that  lies  between  them,  there  is  another  great  feature, 
which  is  the  swift  and  splendid  development  of  the  art  of 
prose.  In  Scott,  in  Landor,  in  De  Quincey,  and  in  the  early 
work  of  Carlyle,  the  process  had  already  begun.  Walter 
Pater's  paper  on  Style  (1888)  is  a  retrospective  Defence  of 
Prose,  written  in  the  light  of  what  the  century  had  achieved. 
Watching  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  Newman  and  Froude,  Thackeray 
and  the  Brontes  and  Matthew  Arnold,  we  wish  that  an  anni- 
versary could  be  established,  a  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  to  celebrate 
the  invention,  not  of  a  single  instrument,  but  of  a  whole 
orchestra  of  new  ones.  New,  in  the  sense  of  being  unprepared 
for,  they  are  not  ;  and  the  formal  development  of  the  modern 
out  of  the  earlier  prose  has  scarcely  yet  been  analysed,  save, 
indeed,  in  the  great  department  of  rhythm.1  But  after  1830 
the  change  is  well  marked,  and  that  in  the  plainer  and  soberer 
as  well  as  in  the  more  imaginative  and  rainbow  styles.  Its 
causes,  of  course,  lie  outside  art,  in  the  fact  that  the  writers 
have  something  fresh  to  say.  A  more  efficient  and  expressive 
language  is  demanded,  is  cried  out  for,  to  perform  the  intel- 
lectual tasks,  and  to  express  the  new  troubles  and  visions,  of 
the  time.  As  in  the  age  of  Anne,  philosophy  comes  down 
from  the  desk  to  speak  the  language  of  this  world  ;  history 
has  to  be  made  '  as  interesting  as  a  novel '  ;  science  has  to 
fight  for  her  claims  in  the  market-place,  and  divinity  in  the 


THE  NEW  ART  IN  PROSE  AND  VERSE     7 

magazines.  Foremost  among  the  great  executants  are  the 
prophets,  Carry le  and  Ruskin,  who  are  driven  to  invent  new- 
tunes  by  the  apostolic  impulse.  If  the  eighteenth  century 
was  the  '  age  of  prose  and  reason,'  the  nineteenth  might  be 
called  the  age  of  prose  and  imagination.  Naturally  there  also 
arise  new  vices — a  new  brassiness,  a  new  foppishness — of  which 
prose  had  hardly  seemed  capable  before  ;  they  will  appear,  in 
due  course,  in  the  sequel  ;  and  yet,  seen  from  afar,  they  are 
but  minor  phenomena,  like  the  rhetoric  of  Junius  or  Lyly's 
euphuism.  And  if  we  leave  aside  the  distinction  between  pure 
and  applied  literature,  and  simply  weigh  the  prose  of  the  time 
against  the  verse,  it  would  seem  that  while  there  is  a  great 
and  noble  body  of  achievement  in  verse,  the  achievement  of 
prose,  both  in  range  and  quality,  is  greater  still.  The  reader 
will  find  more  space  given  to  the  prose  in  these  volumes  than 
to  the  verse  ;  whether  justly  so,  he  must  judge  if  he  reaches 
the  end  of  them.  In  an  epilogue  I  shall  glance  again  at  some 
of  these  conclusions,  and  also  at  the  condition  of  letters  about 
the  year  1880  ;  and  shall  try,  meanwhile,  to  note  from  point 
to  point  some  of  the  links  between  the  period  before  and  the 
period  succeeding  1830,  taking  Li  order  first  the  literature  of 
thought  and  knowledge,  and  then  poetry,  and  then  fiction  ; 
and  shall  begin  with  Carlyle,  who  in  some  sense  is  not  only 
the  first  but  the  foremost  figure  in  the  whole  chronicle,  at 
any  rate  in  respect  of  the  influence  he  exerted. 


CHAPTER  II 
THOMAS  CARLYLE 


What  is  left  of  Thomas  Carlyle,1  for  those  who  cannot  remember 
the  year  1881  ?     He  has  taken  thirty  years  to  recover  from  his 
biographer,  James  Anthony  Froude,  who  professed  to  have 
painted  him,  scowl  and  all,  in  the  spirit  of  the  gospel  of  veracity. 
But  the  mischief  is  that  Fronde  did  no  such  thing,  though  he 
wished  to  do  so.     An  incurable  novelist  and  theorist,  and  also 
something  of  an  artist,  he  built  up  a  finished  portrait  of  Carlyle. 
It  has  a  likeness  ;    there  is  no  doubt  as  to  who  is  intended  ; 
some  of  the  features  are  right,  but  the  expression  is  all  wrong. 
Carlyle's  political  and  religious  opinions,  or  rather  intuitions, 
are  well  indicated.     His  acrimonies,  and  also  his  self-reproaches, 
being  set  down  in  his  own  hand,  have  the  air  of  being  the  best 
possible  evidence  against  him.     But  in  truth  they  are  not. 
The  biographer,  with  the  longest  of  faces,  made  the  worst 
of  them  in  the  name  of  stern  candour  and  pious  fidelity,  and 
admired  Carlyle  hugely  all  the  same,  or  all  the  more,  and 
wondered  that  the  world  did  not  do  so  too.     Carlyle,  no  doubt, 
said  and  meant  endless  sharp  and  unjust  things,  and  wrote 
them  down,  though  often  not  as  Froude  represents  them  ; 
Professor   Eliot   Norton  exposed   Froude 's  lack  of  scholarly 
conscience  as  an  editor.     Still  there,  in  some  shape,  they  are  ; 
but  thej^  are  after-thoughts,  not  all  representing  Carlyle's  real 
inner  life  or  the  spirit  of  his  behaviour.     He  was  more  genial 
and  less  selfish  than  he  makes  himself  out  to  be.     The  bitter 
sallies,  when  spoken,  were  frequently  explained  away  by  the 
accompanying  guffaw,  and  by  the  vernacular  Scots  habit  of 
using  outrageous  language  which  is  understood  all  round,  in 
Scotland,  to  be  half -jocose.     Any  one  who  has  known  Scots  of 
the  primitive  type  will  recognise  the  trait.     It  may  not  be 
endearing,    but    it    is    certainly   misleading.     '  The    insolence 
offensive  to  you,'  wrote  George  Meredith, '  is  part  of  his  humour. 
He  means  what  he  says,  but  only  as  far  as  a  humourist  can 
mean  what  he  says.'     Moreover,  even  of  Carlyle's  truly  vicious 


CHARACTER  9 

sallies  some  are  worth  saving.  It  is  better  to  know  than  not 
to  know  what  he  thought  of  Charles  Lamb.  It  gives  us  a  frag- 
ment of  truth,  though  it  ignores  all  Lamb's  virtue  and  genius. 
There  is  a  similar  note  on  Carlyle  himself,  taken  down  by 
Varnhagen  von  Ense  from  Tieck  in  1852,  describing  him  at 
his  very  worst,  laughing  painfully  and  posing  considerably  ; 
'  his  bearing  rustic  '  (sein  Benehmen  bdurisch),  says  the  Teutonic 
critic  of  manners.  We  would  not  miss  this  note,  and 
Carlyle's  shade  cannot  complain  of  it  ;  yet  it  is  but  the  record 
of  a  bad  hour.  The  truth  is  that  Carlyle's  talk,  which  was 
the  source  of  his  strength  and  is  the  true  starting-point  for 
understanding  him  as  a  writer,  was  also  the  source  of  offence. 
He  had  to  talk,  with  voice  or  pen  ;  it  was  his  ruling  passion  ; 
he  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  notable  talkers  in  our 
history.  A  certain  self -echoing,  in  speech  and  writing,  was  his 
chief  penalty,  and  iteration  his  worst  literary  fault.  Some- 
times it  means  that  he  has  ceased  to  think,  and  for  thinking 
there  can  be  no  '  synthetic  substitute.' 

If  we  wish  to  know  what  Carlyle  was,  we  must  get  behind 
Froude,  and  also  behind  the  Reminiscences  and  the  diaries,  and 
look  at  the  whole  evidence  ;  and  this  the  public  will  never  do. 
The  public  put  Carlyle  up  behind  an  altar,  and  then  howled 
when  it  found  out  he  was  a  man,  and  yet  it  did  not  and  does 
not  see  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  Really  we  know  him 
better  than  we  do  any  other  English  author  ;  better  even  than 
Johnson.  Yet  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to  re-travel  the  whole 
ground  for  ourselves .  We  must  read  the  material  that  has  come 
to  light  since  Froude 's  nine  volumes  on  the  Carlyles,  man  and 
wife,  were  published  :  the  family  records,  the  notes  of  travel, 
the  correspondence  with  strangers,  acquaintance,  and  friends. 
The  shelves  have  been  flooded,  but  many  letters,  such  as  those 
written  to  J.  S.  Mill  in  1830-40,  are  not  yet  published.  Above 
all,  there  are  witnesses 1  like  Caroline  Fox,  Espinasse,  Allingham, 
and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  to  name  only  a  few.  A  shrewd 
and  sane  account  was  given  in  1885  by  Masson,  in  a  lecture 
entitled  Carlyle  Personally.  To  see  how  such  records  correct 
our  impressions,  it  is  enough  to  compare  the  petulance  and 
gloom  displayed  in  Reminiscences  of  My  Irish  Journey  in  1849 
with  the  genial  record  by  Carlyle's  companion  traveller,  Sir 
Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  of  the  same  trip.  Nothing  shows  better 
how  unsafe  a  witness  a  man  can  be  against  himself. 

Many  other  things  obstruct  his  fame.  He  neither  produced 
nor  valued  a  coherent  body  of  teaching  ;  he  seemed  to  welcome 
the  contradictions  in  his  own  doctrine.     He  cut  himself  off, 


10  CARLYLE 

rejoicingly,  from  all  science,  including  the  science  of  history  ;  he 
often  butted  at  art  and  letters  in  a  spirit  of  caprice  ;  and,  in 
comical  contrast  to  J.  S.  Mill,  he  never  supposed  that  he  could 
be  wrong.  He  achieved  no  moulded  and  considered  master- 
piece on  a  large  scale,  ancLhe-wxate  iiimse-lf  mit-and...went  on 
writing.  For  all  this~  he  is  the  grealssijfigure  in  English  letters 
in  Jnsjswji-dajvand  the~last,  along -with- RusHn73>f^eu*~naaj  or 

pfophets The  mass  and  range  of  his  total  worErpTts--4ong 

authority,  its  idiosyncrasy,  its  power  to  disturb,  anger,  and 
quicken  the  English  mind  remain  unique . 

We  cannot  help  pretending  to  put  Carlyle's  ideas  in  order  for 
him  ;  but  he  never  did  so  himself,  and  the  procedure  must  not 
be  driven  too  far.  He^^oxIied.fiot-by-^e&s^ttijagJbi^ 
sending  out  rays  this  way  and  that,  more  or  less  luminous, 
which  set  up  a  disturbance  in  unexpected  places.  For  one  thing, 
he  gave  new  life  to  the  conception  of  authority.  His  belief 
that  .providence  and  power  are  in  the  long  run,  inevitably, 

upon  the  same~slde is  but  one-  amplication-  of  -it, -But,  .the  con- 

■cgption  works  out  differently  in  Ruskin's  benevolent  dream  of 
a  feudal  aristocracy,  in  the  Henry-worship  of  Froude,  and  in 
the  rigour  of  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen  when  he  trumpets 
the  rights  of  the  man  over  the  woman.  The  influence  of 
Carlyle  in  all  these  instances  is  fairly  plain.  But  how  different 
a  turn  he  gives  himself  to  the  same  idea,  when  he  thinks  of  a 
purely  spiritual  authority  like  that  of  Dante  or  of  Johnson  !  So, 
too,  with  his  earlier  and  sounder  thought,  and  his  mystical  vision 
of  the  social  fabric,  which  is  bound  together,  in  one  aspect  of  it, 
by  the  continuity  of  history,  '  past  and  present,'  and,  in  yet 
another,  by  the  community  and  brotherhood  of  workers  ;  in 
each  case  divinely,  and  by  unseen  links.  No  one  can  measure 
how  far  these  thoughts,  blending  with  others  drawn  from 
pl^sical  science  or  political  schools  with  which  Carlyle  had  little 
in  common,  are  found  colouring  the  work  of  the  '  dryasdust  ' 
historian,  or  of  the  '  pedant  '  sociologist.  Again,  Carlyle's 
passion  for  recovering  some  precious  concrete  fact  from  the 
darkness,  and  representing,  say,  the  colour  and  angry  stir  of 
crowds,  behold  it  infecting  the  vision  of  Charles  Dickens,  in  his 
picture  of  the  Terror  or  of  the  Gordon  riots,  or  that  of  Charles 
Kingsley  in  Alton  Locke  !  In  these  unpredictable  ways  Carlyle 
operates,  for  good  or  otherwise. 


EARLY  WRITINGS  11 


II 


He  wrote  for  more  than  forty  years.  The  first  phase  opens 
with  The  Life  of  Schiller  (1823-4),  which  he  unwillingly  reprinted, 
and  ends  with  Sartor  Resartus  (1833-4).  Both  works  appeared 
in  instalments  ;  Carlyle's  early  productions  are  shaped  by  the 
needs  and  scale  of  a  magazine  article  ;  and  during  these  years 
he  lived,  as  De  Quincey  and  Hazlitt  had  done,  by  writing  for 
periodicals.  His  native  dogmatism  was  not  softened  by  this 
way  of  working  ;  the  official  '  quarterly  '  style  hampered  him 
and  for  a  time  delayed  the  explosion  of  his  true  utterance. 
Until  he  was  about  twenty-eight  he  did  job-work,  writing  in 
the  Edinburgh  Encyclopcedia  and  translating  Legendre.  Then 
he  began  his  task  of  discovering  German  thought  and  letters  to 
the  English  public.  He  antiquated  most  of  the  labours  of 
Coleridge  and  De  Quincey  in  that  field  ;  he  safely  founded 
German  studies,  it  may  be  said,  in  this  country.  He  trans- 
lated Wilhelm  Meister,  not  with  great  accuracy  ;  he  poured 
forth  studies  of  Goethe  and  the  romantic  fantasts.  He  wrote 
a  destructive  review,  still  amusing,  of  William  Taylor's  Historic 
Survey  of  German  Poetry.  More  than  twenty  of  Carlyle's 
articles  treat  of  matters  German ;  his  exposition  of  the 
Nibelungenlied  is  still  fresh. 

The  pages  on  Novalis,  Tieck,  Richter,  Fouque  and  their  group 
seem  to-day  somewhat  out  of  scale.  To  ignore  Heine  and 
Schopenhauer  was  as  bad  an  omission  as  any  of  those  for  which 
Carlyle  castigated  Ta3'lor.  But  some  of  his  noblest  sallies  are 
found  in  these  early  papers.  It  is  true  that  there  is  not  a  little 
strain  and  inflation  too — the  cruder  pulpit  note  is  still  audible. 
But  in  work  like  The  Death  of  Goethe  (1832)  Carlyle  touches  the 
height  of  his  solemn  memorial  prose,  In  elegy  he  is  always 
great.  The  thought  of  a  departed  hero,  or  of  his  own  private 
and  beloved  dead,  plays  on  his  heart  as  on  a  violin,  and  his 
words  on  the  closing  hours  of  Cromwell  or  Frederick,  on  his 
lost  wife,  or  on  Sterling's  last  letter,  are  music.  But  he  was 
perfecting  his  style  for  many  other  ends  as  well  ;  for  ethical 
appeal,  rhapsody,  diatribe,  prophecy,  and  criticism.  He  did 
this  in  the  course  of  his  effort  to  clear  up  his  own  views  of  life 
and  history  ;  and  he  received  a  great  impulse  to  that  effort  from 
his  German  studies.  The  influence  of  Goethe1  upon  Carlyle 
must  not  be  mistaken ;  it  was  the  influence  of  Goethe's  moral 
ideas,  and  of  some  of  his  poetic  conceptions,  not  of  his  science  or 
of  his  naturalism.     It  follows  that  Carlyle's  view  of  Goethe 


12  CARLYLE 

was  one-sided.  The  old  poet's  final  composure  of  spirit  he 
could  only  admire  from  afar  off,  though  he  perceived  his  ethical 
sagacity.  A  little  of  Goethe,  after  all,  went  a  long  way  with 
him.  He  recurs  const  antty  to  a  few  texts,  usually  of  stoical  or 
pantheistic  verse.  It  was  and  is  the  special  gift  of  Goethe  to 
drop  a  few  seeds  into  the  mind,  which  sprout  almost  unawares 
and  end  by  affecting  our  whole  life  and  vision.  Thus  Carlyle 
drew  upon  Goethe,  as  he  did  in  his  voracious  irregular  way  on 
Kant  and  Fichte,  for  nutriment  in  his  search  for  a  working 
faith  and  for  some  imaginative  answer  to  the  riddle  of  the  world 
which  could  satisfy  his  ethical  and  spiritual  passion.  And  to 
such  a  nature  Goethe  was  a  liberating  power — the  sun  breaking 
through  the  Scotch  gloom  and  east  wind.  As  we  know,  he 
recognised  and  encouraged  Carlyle,  who  was  a  puritan  qualifying 
to  escape  from  prison  ;  and  when,  as  so  often,  we  come  upon 
some  unexpected  wide  easy  glimpse  of  life  in  Carlyle,  we  incline 
to  see  the  traces  of  the  author  of  Meister  ;  whenever,  indeed,  it 
is  not  due  to  the  aboriginal,  incurable,  free-spirited  Scot  in 
him,  with  something  yet  older  than  John  Knox  in  his  bones. 

Carlyle  drew  on  the  Germans  not  only  for  the  philosophy  in 
their  poetry  but  for  the  poetry  in  their  philosophy.  He  was 
himself  incapable  of  systematic  thinking,  and  after  a  while 
ceased  to  respect  it  altogether.  He  had  little  of  the  instinct 
that  seeks  to  harmonise  the  truths  which  beat  in  upon  the 
mind  from  different  sides.  He  found  no  room  for  the  '  hero  as 
philosopher,'  and  in  1838  he  said  of  the  German  school  :  1 

I  studied  them  once  attentively,  but  found  that  I  got  nothing 
out  of  them.  .  .  .  This  study  of  metaphysics  had  only  the  result 
...  at  last  to  deliver  me  altogether  out  of  metaphysics.  ...  I 
resolved  for  my  part  on  having  nothing  more  to  do  with  meta- 
physics at  all. 

He  did  not  give  metaphysics  much  chance  ;  but  it  is  untrue 
that  he  got  nothing  out  of  them.  Carlyle  was  not,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  quite  above  biting  the  hands  that  had  fed  him.  What 
he  gained  from  metaphysics  leavened  his  whole  body  of  think- 
ing, and  determined  considerably  the  form  and  substance  of  his 
'  Everlasting  Yea,'  as  he  came  in  the  end  to  pronounce  it. 
German  philosophy  and  poetry  attracted  him  just  about  the 
date  of  the  mental  crisis  recorded  in  Sartor,  deepened  his  dis- 
content with  current  British  thought,  and  provided  him  with 
other  fare.  To  see,  then,  what  Germany  did  for  Carlyle  and 
how  his  mind  was  moulded,  we  must  remember  against  what 
he  rebelled. 


AGE  OF  REASON  13 

Hr.jxhllrri  n^ninrt  nil  ponsermtive  reasoning. _^He  could 
not  bear  the  '  definitioning  and  hair-splitting  '  of  Plato,1  whilst 
acknowledging  his  '  magnanimous  perception,  humour,  godlike 
indignation  veiled  in  silence,  and  ether  rare  gifts.'  A  man  of 
.jjlfcuitions^Jifi  came  to  confound  clear  thinking  either ~wrffi~the: 
'  logic -chopping  '  of  the  faithless  eighteenth  century,  or  else 
with  the  cobweb  deductions  of  '  first  philosophy.'  But  it  was 
the  '  agft  of  reason  '  itself,  the  pretensions  of  the  '  enlightenment,' 
that  disgusted  him  first  of  all.  It  was  his  business  to  miscon- 
strue  that  age  worse  than  any  one  else.  He  is  louder  than 
Culuiidgc  m-~ftis~~repudiation  ot  nTT-It  shocked  at  once  his 
imaginative  and  his  moral  sense.  He  read  in  Hume  and  Paley 
a  mechanical  view  of  nature  and  an  ignoDie  conception  of 
mankind.  Thevreriuced  motive  *<->  «■  ha]»r>n^-Qh^t.^d~^>rir,. 
veniences  ;  fney  were  blind  to  beauty,  mystery,  divinity,  and 
also  to  the  unconscious  element  in  man  from  wEicETt'he  per- 
ception of  these  things  wells  up.  They  did  not  lift  the  veil, 
but  thought  the  veil  the  whole  reality.  Their  explanation  was 
cheaper  than  the  phenomena  behind  which  they  could  not  see. 
And  they  could  not  even  see  the  phenomena  ;  they  fell  far  short 
of  the  plain,  pious,  traditional  view  of  life  of  which  Johnson 
was  the  spokesman.  Thus  Voltaire,  Hume,  and  Gibbon  seemed 
arch-misreaders  of  life  and  history.  But  the  German  idealists 
and  poets  appeared  to  assign  to  life  more  than  its  face  value. 
They  went  behind  appearances,  and  saw  in  the  human  story 
the  progressive  embodiments  of  a  divine  Idea  ;  they  transferred 
the  grounds  of  impulse  from  the  region  of  the  mere  under- 
standing to  that  of  the  moral  will,  the  heart,  and  the  un- 
conscious. They  saw  in  human  society  not  the  upshot  of  a 
bargain  or  a  dog-fight,  but  a  living,  mystical  fabric  whose  pattern 
was  for  ever  being  woven,  ever  more  visibly,  in  the  looms  of  God. 
These  conceptions,  which  were  never  to  leave  him,  Carlyle  drew 
from  his  study  of  Goethe,  and  still  more  from  his  study  of 
Fichte. 

The  age  of  reason  could  well  enough  bide  its  time  through  all 
such  contumely,  and  its  great  work  of  science  and  criticism  was 
by  no  means  to  be  upset.  The  '  mere  understanding  '  will 
always  have  plenty  to  regulate,  and  new  rubbish  to  clear  away. 
It  was  revenged  on  Carlyle  himself,  who  shut  his  eyes  to  the 
advance  of  biology  in  his  own  lifetime  and  to  its  reaction  on 
universal  thought.  Hegel,  during  the  same  period,  conceived 
of  idealism  itself  on  a  vaster  plan  ;  but  of  Hegel  Carlyle  took 
no  heed.  He  himself  talks  so  like  a  Hebrew,  and  his  thinking 
is  so  disorderly,  that  it  is  often  hard  to  specify  his  creditors. 


14  CARLYLE 

Amongst  them  may  have  been  Kant,  whose  conception  of  duty 
and  the  '  categorical  imperative,'  and  whose  account  of  time 
and  space,  find  analogies  in  Carlyle,  but  whom  he  did  not  well 
understand.  Time  and  space  are  to  Kant  the  forms  under 
which  the  mind  must  needs  receive  the  data  of  sense  ;  to  Carlyle, 
they  are  the  illusions,  the  '  clothes,'  which  we  must  think  away 
before  reaching  reality.  This  motion  illuminates  his  view  of 
the  historian's  task,  which  is  to  make  the  past  and  the  distant 
a  thing  of  here  and  now  ;  to  portray,  as  they  truly  were,  things 
long  dead  and  forgotten.  Such  is  the  work,  he  thought,  for 
'  us  who  struggle  piously,  passionately,  to  behold,  if  but  in 
glimpses,  the  faces  of  our  vanished  Fathers.'  To  do  that  is  to 
outwit  time  and  space.  The  ideal  is  a  true  one,  and  Carlyle, 
at  his  best,  attained  it.  But  on  Fichte  he  founded  his  view  both 
of  the  makers  and  of  the  process  of  history.  To  this  influence 
I  return  in  connexion  with  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 


HI 

The  use  to  which  Carlyle  puts  these  ideas  is  plainer  seen  in 
Characteristics  (1831)  than  in  the  more  intimate  but  more  shape- 
less confessions  of  Sartor.  The  philosopher,  in  this  essay,  is 
seen  rejecting  reason  ;  the  intellect  saws  the  branch  it  sits  upon. 
He  appeals  to  the  spiritual  emotions  and  the  moral  will,  not 
to  the  intellect  ;  he  tries  to  give  an  account  of  the  crisis  through 
which  he  has  passed.  Such  a  crisis  can  often  only  be  expressed 
in  imaginative  terms,  religiously,  lyrically,  through  incanta- 
tions and  sacred  phrases  : 

Let  the  free,  reasonable  Will,  which  dwells  in  us,  as  in  our  Holy 
of  Holies,  be  indeed  free,  and  obeyed  like  a  Divinity,  as  its  right 
and  its  effort :  the  perfect  obedience  will  be  the  silent  one. 

This  is  the  old  doctrine  of  the  '  inner  light,'  minus  the  theology  ; 
it  is  Carlyle 's  mysticism,  in  presence  of  which  mere  prudential 
precept  and  motive -mongering,  the  weighing  of  pensions  and 
penalties  in  this  or  another  world,  shrink  ashamed.  He  does 
not  mind  the  risks  of  abjuring  reason  ;  he  throws  over  science, 
verification,  the  arguments  of  others,  and  he  does  not  see  how 
such  an  attitude  may  end  in  conceit  and  anarchy.  He  strides 
over  such  pitfalls,  and  proceeds  to  apply  similar  ideas  to  the 
fabric  of  society.  Through  the  '  communion  of  souls,'  man 
becomes  a  '  new  collective  individual,'  and  society  a  '  true 
region  of  the  supernatural,'  and  '  the  standing  wonder  of  our 
existence.'     It  also  embodies  a  divine  idea,  that  of  '  united, 


CHARACTERISTICS— HIS  FAITH  15 

victorious  labour.'  Here,  then,  is  the  evangel  of  silent  work, 
preached  by  Carlyle  all  his  life  afterwards . 

He  tells  us  what  we  are  not  to  work  at  ;  not  at  some  of  the 
historic  activities  of  mankind  :  not  at  law  and  its  reform,  not 
at  metaphysic  and  its  applications,  not  at  art  or  its  principles. 
Life  is  too  serious  for  all  that.  Society  is  a  scene  of  ignorance, 
famine  and  poverty,  not  to  be  helped  by  such  pursuits.  We  are 
to  work  in  silence  ;  we  are  to  '  summon  the  Wisest  in  the 
Commonwealth  '  to  effect  a  cure  ;  who  he  may  be,  the  Lectures 
on  Heroes,  and  above  all  the  examples  of  Cromwell  and 
Frederick,  will  show  us  afterwards.  And  he,  the  Wisest,  in 
whatever  field  he  works,  must  have  faith.  What  Carlyle 's  own 
faith  is,  we  hear  in  a  general  way.  It  is  that  '  no  good  that  is 
possible  but  shall  one  day  be  real '  ;  that  '  Evil  is  precisely  the 
dark,  disordered  material  out  of  which  man's  Freewill  has  to 
create  an  edifice  of  order  and  Good  '  ;  and  that  it  rests  on  the 
assurance  that  '  a  God  made  this  Universe,  and  a  Demon 
not !  '  Such  a  premiss,  to  Carlyle,  is  as  much  an  axiom,  an 
unprovable  basis  of  all  that  is  certain,  as  it  is  to  Newman ;  an 
inherited  residue,  no  doubt,  of  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  with  all 
the  dogmatic  superstructure  gone.  But  his  practical  inference, 
while  in  accord  with  this  axiom,  is  not  staked  upon  it,  and 
gives  the  key  to  his  sounder  notion  of  history  and  historical 
composition  : 

The  true  Past  departs  not,  nothing  that  was  worthy  in  the  Past 
departs  ;  no  Truth  or  Goodness  realised  by  man  ever  dies,  or  can 
die  ;  but  is  all  still  here,  and,  recognised  or  not,  lives  and  works 
through  endless  changes. 

Once  more,  time  and  space  are  illusions,  which  the  historian, 
the  beckoner-back  of  the  Past  in  its  living  image,  has  to  conjure 
away  ;  and  what  thus  remains  alive  is  the  Good  ;  and  whatever 
man  shall  now  do  that  hereafter  may  show  itself  worthy  of 
recovery  by  the  historian,  that  is  the  Good  also.  Carlyle 
preached  this  true  and  great  evangel  ;  he  rang  the  changes  on 
its  terms  as  on  a  peal  of  bells,  with  an  iteration  that  mars  him 
as  a  writer  ;  but  they  sank  into  the  general  mind  confusedly 
and  potently. 

Like  most  great  confessions.  Sartor  Resartus1  describes  a 
long-past  experience  for  which  words  had  been  wanting  at  the 
time.  Carlyle's  early  letters  2  give  us  hardly  an  inkling  of  the 
inner  struggle  that  was  shaping  his  soul  and  character,  though 
they  bring  vividly  before  us  the  figure  of  the  youthful  Scot, 
with  his  egoism  and  rhetoric,  his  friendliness  and  piety,  and  his 


16  CARLYLE 

blind  consciousness  of  future  power.  They  open  in  a  cheery 
schoolboy  tone,  touched  with  vague  fierce  striving,  and  soon 
break  out  into  rhapsody.  As  the  years  from  twenty  to  twenty- 
five  go  by,  there  is  a  sharpening  of  edge  and  purpose,  though 
as  yet  of  God  only  knows  what  purpose.  The  young  Carlyle  is 
seen  flinging  himself  on  life  and  books.  He  is  by  no  means 
precocious  ;  his  mind  and  style  develop  slowly  and  painfully. 
Deep  down  in  him  are  the  memories,  with  their  rainbow  fringe, 
of  his  home  and  schooling,  of  his  loves,  and  of  the  private 
passionate  conflicts,  afterwards  to  be  recorded  in  the  chapters 
on  the  Everlasting  No  and  Yea.  All  this  is  set  down  in  Sartor 
in  Carlyle 's  faithful  ineffaceable  way,  happily  not  before  he  is 
master  of  his  predestined  style,  and  master  also  of  the  discords 
which  enrich  the  compass  of  the  style  and  are  indispensable  for 
the  expression  of  his  experience.  But  W3  must  go  carefully  ; 
for  Sartor  is  also  charged  with  the  ideas  and  antipathies  which 
had  grown  up  in  him  meanwhile  and  which  reflect  their  hues 
backward  on  the  story  of  his  youth. 

Sartor  is  not  a  book  that  can  be  drawn  out  into  propositions, 
and  it  seems  at  first  a  confusion  of  unharmonised  ideas.,,..  But 
its^threefold  or  fourfold  origin  can  be  noticed?  "There  are,  to 
begin  with,  Carlyle 's  own  remembered  doubts,  and  despairs,  and 
illuminations.  Next  there  is  the  influence  of  the  humourists, 
like  Sterne  and  Butler,  and  possibly  Richter  ;  they  may  answer 
in  some  degree  (though  probably  not  much)  for  the  whims  and 
tricks  of  the  language,  and  the  pervading  atmosphere  of 
fantasy.  And  thirdly,  there  are  the  German  thinkers  and  poets 
named  already,  whose  conceptions  peer  out  in  a  somewhat 
shapeless,  also  humouristic  guise.  A  fourth  element  must  be 
added  :  Carlyle's  fervent  sympathy  with  Piers  the  Ploughman, 
and  his  engrossment  with  the  problem  of  labour — the  'condition- 
of -England-question.'  These  four  strands  are  interwoven  past 
unravelling,  but  the  resulting  pattern  is  like  nothing  else  in  the 
world.  Out  of  the  mask  that  recalls  the  older  humourists  comes 
a  voice  different  from  theirs  altogether.  Swift  might  well  have 
thought  of  a  naked  House  of  Lords,  and  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  may 
have  actually  suggested  the  notion  of  a  mystical  meaning  for 
clothes,  and  of  working  out  that  exorbitant  fancy  to  the  bitter 
end  ;  but  Carlyle's  elaboration  of  it  Swift  might  have  judged 
to  be  fit  only  for  the  '  house  for  fools  and  mad  '  that  he  founded. 
Aryfl  ™  truth,  fhp  whnlpJaiisiness  of  the,  'clothes-philosophy  ' 
is  worried  by  Carlyle  to  death .  The  gods  command  a  lucid  irony, 
but/the  Titans  hatcrTa  splay"a~»d  clumsy  humour.  The  handi- 
work often  does  injustice  to  the  ideas.     The  name  of  '  clothes  '  is 


SARTOR  17 

given  to  the  successive  coats,  wrappages,  or  disguises — conceal- 
ing but  also  symbolic — or  tne  soul  oi  man,  proceeding  from 
the  soul  outwards,  and  including  all  his  personal  attributes 
(even  his  name)  and  surroundings,  his  circumstance  and  origin, 
and  all  that  makes  him  be  or  seem  what  he  is.  Carry  this 
process  far  enough,  and  it  is  clear  that  while  each  man  is  alone 
in  his  inner  fastness  and  must  make  his  own  salvation  (by  means 
of  the  '  Everlasting  Yea,'  which  is  the  assertion  against  the 
universe  of  his  own  will,  freedom  and  hope) — still,  since  the 
surroundings,  the  clothes,  invest  my  brother  as  well  as  me,  the 
fates  of  all  individuals  are  found  in  the  long  run  to  intertwine 
and  overlap  essentially  ;  and  by  such  '  organic  filaments  '  one 
indivisible  society  of  souls  is  formed.  This  is  the  sphere,  and 
this  also  the  warrant,  of  all  the  pieties  of  life  and  of  human 
brotherhood,  especially  the  brotherhood  of  those  who  labour 
honestly  at  any  worthy  end.  The  noblest  of  such  labourers 
stand  at  the  two  extremes  ;  '  two  men  I  honour  and  no  third  '  ; 
the  thinker  or  poet  (afterwards  the  '  hero  '),  and  again  Piers  the 
Ploughman,  the  producer,  the  underpaid,  the  ignored,  without 
whose  toil  we  perish.  At  this  stage  Carlyle  muses  more  on  the 
sufferings  and  rights  of  the  mass  of  men  than  on  their  imbecility. 
He  declared  later  that  Piers  was  only  fit  to  be  dragooned  and 
obey  ;  but  in  Sartor  that  dubious  twist  to  the  gospel  is  un- 
apparent. 

The  central  passages.  oLJiartar,.  disclose  a  surprising  trans- «^ 
formation  of  the  Protestant  consciousness.  The  pages  on  the 
Evexlasling J&o-and  Yea  tcl^the  story  of  Bunyan  and  Fox  and 
a  million  more,  but  in  a  form  sublimed  and  universalised,  and 
rid  of  all  doctrine  but  a  vague  profound  Theism  which  is  hardly 
personal  in  pha  ranter      This  is  the  one  fixed  article  that  Carlyle 

ret ains .       Tt,  q.moiint.«  *n  a    holipf  in    annrl   onrl   jntJi'nOj  which   hft 

calls  God,  finally  prevailing^:  a  force  regarded,  however,  not 
aTTworking  from  without  but  as  immanent  in  the  actual  process 
of  the  world's  history,  and  as  manifested  chiefly  in  thedajbours 
of  the  elect  of  the  world.  When  he  was  eighty -three  he  said  to 
^STlingham  : 

The  evidence  to  me  of  God — and  the  only  evidence—  is  the  feelings 
I  have  deep  down  in  the  very  bottom  of  my  heart  of  right  and  \ 
truth  and  justice.     I  believe  that  all  things  are  governed  by  Eternal    ] 
Goodness  and  Wisdom,  and  not  otherwise  ;   but  we  cannot  see  and    / 
never   shall  see  how  it  is  all  managed.  .  .  .  Whoever  looks  into 
himself  must  be  aware  that  at  the  centre  of  things  is  a  mysterious 
Deiniurgus — who  is  God,  and  who  cannot  in  the  least  be  adequately 
spoken  of  in  any  human  words. 

VOL.  I.  B 


18  CARLYLE 


IV 


In  the  next  phase,  which  opens  in  1837  with  The  French 
Revolution,  a  History,  Carlyle  commences  historian,  biographer, 
and  portrait -painter.  The  story,  or  rather  the^  scene  and  the 
episode,  is  now  the  main  thing  ;  but  it  is  enriched,  overloaded, 
and  often  suffocated  by  the  comment  and  the  chorus.  It  is 
represented  in  the  light  of  the  philosophy  of  life  which  Carlyle 
has  now  matured  ;  and  the  philosophy  itself  becomes  modified  in 
the  application.  The  notion  of  the  hero  as  ruler,  of  the  autocrat 
by  divine  appointment,  and  of  the  hammer-wielding  maker  of 
history,  comes  to  the  fore  in  Oliver  Cromwell's  Letters  and 
Speeches,  with  Elucidations  ( 1845) .  Concurrently,  Carlyle 's  gaze 
is  more  firmly  fixed  on  the  political  and  social  issues  of  his  time, 
and  he  prophesies  more  and  more  loudly  concerning  them, 
and  more  definitely.  Past  and  Present  (1843)  is  half  history 
and  half  prophecy,  and  its  real  theme  (the  same  as  William 
Langland's),  namely  the  destinies,  duties,  and  hopes  of  labour, 
is  anticipated  in  the  article  on  Chartism  (1840)  and  continued  in 
Latter-Day  Pamphlets  (1850).  Carlyle 's  larger  conception  of 
history,  thus  proved  upon  both  '  past  and  present,'  is  further 
and  better  revealed  in  the  six  lectures  On  Heroes,  Hero-  Worship 
and  the  Heroic  in  History,  delivered  in  1840.  His  most  genial 
book,  The  Life  of  John  Sterling  (1851)  closes  this  period,  during 
which  the  essays,  including  that  on  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott, 
are  thrown  off  as  of  old,  though  more  rarely.  By  this  time  all 
Carlyle's  gifts  are  matured  except  one,  namely  his  skill  in  the 
humorous  exhibition  of  life  and  manners,  for  which  he  finds  a 
huge  canvas  in  Frederick  the  Great. 

Carlyle,  then,  had  already  sowed  his  ideas  broadcast  ;  and  he 
would  have  been  false  to  his  own  rejection  of  logic  had  he  con- 
descended to  argue  them  out.  But  he  first  proceeded  to  test 
them  upon  the  '  crowning  Phenomenon  of  our  Modern  Time.' 
The  French  Revolution x  must  be  read  with  such  attendant 
studies  as  Mirabeau  and  The  Diamond  Necklace,  which  contain 
some  of  his  best  painting.  His  tone  varies  considerably  :  he 
is  now  a  satirical,  denouncing  moralist,  now  a  devotee  of 
strength  and  the  accomplished  fact,  and  now  a  spectator 
standing  back  from  the  greatest  flare-up  in  history  and 
vociferously  admiring  it.  Thus  he  often  does  little  but  reflect 
the  confusion  of  the  events  themselves,  and  his  prodigious 
declamatory  emphasis  is  like  the  fire  of  a  million  rounds  of 
blank  cartridge  ;  so  that  the  mind  is  but  smokily  illuminated. 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  19 

For  this  and  many  reasons  it  is  still  easy  to  form  false  expecta- 
tions of  The  French  Revolution,  and  to  do  it  wrong. 

Carlyle  did  not  use  all  the  material  at  disposal,  and  fuller 
knowledge  has  corrected  him  in  countless  details.  He  does  not 
always  give  us  a  plain  tale  of  what  is  happening.  He  is 
impatient,  as  ever,  by  temper  and  on  theory,  with  constitutional 
and  legal  history,  and  therefore  with  many  vital  issues.  He  had 
no  clear  sense  of  the  international  aspects  of  the  Revolution. 
His  account  of  its  proximate  causes,  financial  and  social,  is 
admittedly  most  imperfect.  He  sees,  not  without  sympathy, 
that  the  work  of  demolition  was  an  historic  necessity.  The 
work  of  reconstruction  he  does  not  see,  nor  its  lasting  effects, 
nor  its  value  to  the  world.  Nor  does  he  notice  the  influence  of 
political  events  upon  the  history  of  thought  and  art.  More- 
over, he  gets  tired  and  breaks  off  short  at  an  arbitrary  point 
with  the  advent  of  Napoleon,  leaving  unfaced  the  new  problem 
then  arising.  In  general,  Carlyle's  account  requires  confirmation. 

But  then,  and  with  all  allowance  made,  it  again  and  again 
receives  confirmation.  The  diggers  and  historians  who  came 
after  him  have  not  excelled  him  when  he  is  right.  Many  of  the 
famous  passages,  especially  in  the  early  books,  such  as  the 
death  of  Marat,  or  the  fighting  at  Nancy,  or  the  '  Grand 
Entries,'  are  pronounced  to  be,  in  substance,  though  often  not 
in  minutiae,  proof  against  the  modern  verifier.  He  divined 
the  nature  of  many  of  his  personages  better,  we  may  almost  say, 
than  with  his  information  he  had  a  right  to  do.  Moreover,  he 
was  a  pioneer.  The  Revolution  was  not  forty  years  old  when 
he  wrote,  and  Talleyrand  was  still  alive.  He  was  the  first, 
Lord  Acton  has  said,  to  deliver  the  English  mind  from  '  the 
thraldom  of  Burke,'  who  saw  nothing  in  the  Revolution  but  a 
cataclysm  of  all  order  and  hope.  Whigs  like  Mackintosh  had 
wavered  unquietly,  now  finding  the  massacres  and  the  Terror 
indigestible,  and  now  softening  when  they  thought  of  how  much 
evil  had  been  abolished  notwithstanding.  None  of  them  had 
brought  home  the  world-changing  character  of  the  event  or 
its  human  reality.  Carlyle  is  true  to  his  own  conception  of 
historical  writing,  which  is  an  indispensable  if  not  an  adequate 
one.  He  tries  to  recover  the  past  in  its  fume  and  passion,  and 
the  faces  of  the  dead  as  they  were  in  life.  Mill,  in  his  early 
salutation  of  the  book  in  the  Westminster  Review  (July  1837) 
fixed  on  its  true  praise,  and  his  pale  English  '  takes  gayer 
colours,  like  an  opal  warmed  ' 

In  Shakespeare,  consequently,  we  feel  we  are  in  a  world  of 
realities  ;    we  are  among  such  beings  as  really  could  exist,  as  do 


20  CARLYLE 

exist,  or  have  existed,  and  as  we  can  sympathise  with  ;  the  faces 
we  see  around  us  are  human  faces,  and  not  mere  rudiments  of  such, 
or  exaggerations  of  single  features.  This  quality,  so  often  pointed 
out  as  distinctive  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  distinguishes  Mr.  Carlyle's 
history. 

The  justice  of  the  parallel,  exalted  though  it  be,  is  beyond  ques- 
tion. Much  of  Carlyle's  power  is  due  to  his  unrivalled  sense  of 
the  epical-grotesque,  which  continually  puts  out  its  head  amidst 
scenes  of  blood  and  fury  or  in  the  solemn  functions  of  assemblies. 
The  Revolution  is  an  Iliad  where  Thersites  often  sways  the 
event,  and  the  Assembly  and  the  Convention  are  a  quarry  for 
a  satirist  of  'talking-apparatus';  pathos  and  futile  heroism, 
the  sublime  and  the  bestial,  vanity  and  efficiency,  are  inter- 
mingled ,  often  in  the  same  person .  Yet  the  reader  never  forgets 
the  presence  of  vast  issues  and  consequences,  however  dimly 
Carlyle  may  define  them . 

The  method  of  the  book  does  not  fit  into  any  of  the  regular 
categories.  It  is  neither  that  of  the  strict  historian  nor  that  of 
the  free  artist.  All  is  verified,  at  least  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
writer  ;  but  then  all  is  selected,  not  in  the  sense  in  which  every 
chronicler  is  forced  to  select,  but  for  the  service  of  epical  or 
narrative  art.  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  in  The  Dynasts  has  pre- 
sented the  great  sequel  to  Carlyle's  story.  He,  too,  builds 
faithfully  on  the  document,  and  reproduces  real  scenes  and 
speeches  as  nearly  as  the  medium  of  verse  allows.  The  result 
represents  one  stage  further  from  science,  and  nearer  to  pure 
art,  than  Carlyle's  volumes.  Mr.  Hardy  also  provides  a  chorus 
of  philosophic  comment,  which  is  quite  alien  to  Carlyle's  and 
is  the  mirror  of  his  own  changing  moods,  whether  ironic,  com- 
passionate, or  hopeful.  In  the  same  powerful,  inconclusive 
manner,  Carlyle  uses  prose  for  a  running  accompaniment. 
The  effect  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the  judicial,  impersonal  treat- 
ment used  in  the  'scientific'  histories,  where  the  author  gets 
himself  conscientiously  out  of  the  way,  though  his  view  of  life, 
all  the  same,  is  covertly  impressed  upon  his  handiwork. 


In  1838  Carlyle  took  up  again  a  broken  project  of  his  youth 
to  give  some  account  of  the  Civil  Wars  ;  and  after  much  striving 
it  happily  took  the  shape,  not  of  a  general  history,  but  of  an 
edition  of  Cromwell's  x  utterances,  his  Letters  and  Speeches ; 
with  a  running  comment,  mostly  biographical,  but  also  intro- 


CROMWELLIAD  21 

during  many  memorable  scenes  of  Parliament  and  battle.     The 
work,   several  times   burned  in  despair,  appeared  in   1845  ; 
editions  followed,  on  the  heels  of  instant  success,  in  1846  and 
1849,    with    new    gleanings    added,   and    with   the    '  Squire  ' 
forgeries,  which  had  deceived  Carlyle,  doubtfully  banished  to 
an  appendix.     In  the  modern  edition  of  the  book,  revised  by 
other  hands,  these  impostures  disappear,  and  some  errors  of 
Carlyle's,   mostly  minute,  stand  corrected.     The   Letters  and 
Speeches  produced  a  revolution  in  the  general  opinion  concerning 
Oliver  Cromwell,  whom  Whigs  and  Radicals,  no  less  than  Tories, 
had  with  one  accord  misread.     These  descendants  of  the  dis- 
believers in  '  enthusiasm  '  could  hardly  credit  the  honesty  of 
Cromwell's  scriptural  dialect  ;    Macaulay  quotes  the  judicial 
Hallam's  description  of  Cromwell  as   '  one  who  had  sucked 
only  the  dregs  of  a  besotted  fanaticism  '  ;  and  his  actual  words, 
the  best  witness  to  his  character,  had  still  to  be  faithfully 
cleared  and  presented.     Yet  even  writers  like  Macaulay,  who 
recognised  Cromwell's  political  greatness,  were  cut  off  by  temper 
and  faculty  from  understanding  his  spiritual  side .     Carlyle  was 
born  to  understand  Cromwell — not  indeed  all  his  policy  or  pro- 
cedure, but  his  essential  spirit  and  its  language  ;  and  the  main 
lines  of  his  portrait  have  been  accepted  by  the  impartial  school 
of  historians,  to  which  he  did  not  himself  belong.     He  is  an 
advocate,  but  an  advocate  largely  in  the  right.     However,  his 
editorial  service  must  be  distinguished  from  his  commentary, 
which  has  admittedly  many  gaps  and  faults  of  perspective. 
He  cared  not  for  constitutional  questions,  and  was  fairly  crazed 
against  parliaments,  whether  of  the  nineteenth  or  the  seventeenth 
century  ;  Cromwell,  as  the  modern  scholar  demonstrates,  being 
much  tenderer  of  the  rights  of  assemblies  x  than  is  Carlyle 
himself. 

In  the  '  Cromwelliad  '  the  accessory  figures  are,  for  Carlyle, 
unusually  faint  in  drawing  ;  this  is  a  penalty  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  hero  applied  to  history.  Indeed  orderly  history  was  even 
less  the  aim  than  it  had  been  in  The  French  Revolution.  As 
before,  he  was  preoccupied,  first  of  all,  with  the  artistic 
recovery  of  faces,  and  characters,  and  scenes,  and  tumultu- 
ous passages  ;  and  also  with  the  overarching  moral  and 
spiritual  issues  of  the  case.  To  him  the  story  was  a  great 
episode,  long  ill  understood,  in  the  conflict  between  righteous- 
ness (which  in  the  last  resort  is  power)  and  injustice,  which 
comes  soon  or  late  to  a  bad  violent  end  ;  the  axe  being 
wielded  by  the  hero  as  King,  the  single-handed  maker  of 
history. 


22  CARLYLE 

But  Carlyle's  real  theme  is  the  impersonal  process  of  which 
Cromwell  was  only  the  agent.     It  is 

this  grand  Puritan  Revolt,  which  we  may  define  as  an  attempt  to 
bring  the  Divine  Law  of  the  Bible  into  actual  practice  in  men's 
affairs  on  the  Earth. 

Taking  the  Puritans  at  this,  their  own  valuation,  Carlyle  made 
them  intelligible,  and  disposed  of  the  long-standing  cant  against 
the  '  fanatics  and  hypocrites.'  His  vindication  thus  goes  far 
beyond  Cromwell.  In  his  posture  towards  the  other  party  he 
is  remarkably  grotesque  and  ignorant.  He  is  as  one-sided  as 
Clarendon.  We  hear  hardly  a  word  of  the  presence  of  char- 
acter, genius,  literature,  learning,  wit,  eloquence,  or  sagacity 
amongst  the  loyalists.  The  intellectual  and  constitutional 
history  of  the  time  and  the  ties  of  that  history  with  the  past 
and  the  future  hardly  exist  for  him.  It  is  true,  and  is  also 
lucky,  that  his  business  was  different.  He  did  it  memorably 
well ;  and  the  accessory  pictures  of  Dunbar,  Worcester,  the 
expulsion  of  the  Rump,  the  death  of  the  Protector,  fulfil  Carlyle's 
ideal  of  recreating  great  events  forgotten  or  unrealised.  Beside 
such  achievements,  we  forget  the  small  annoyance  caused  by 
his  comic  jeremiads  over  his  '  job  of  buckwashing,'  and  against 
Dryasdust,  without  whom  he  could  not  move  an  inch  ;  and  by 
his  continued  chorus  of  hoots  and  interjections. 


Vi 

The  History  of  Friedrich  II.  of  Prussia,  commonly  called 
Frederick  the  Great  (1858-65),  is  seldom  mentioned  now  amongst 
the  '  authorities  '  on  its  subject  ;  the  official  correspondence  of 
the  king  and  much  other  material  has  become  available  ;  so 
that  Carlyle's  longest  history,  to  himself  the  cruellest  of  tasks, 
the  stiffest  of  all  the  furrows  he  set  himself  to  plough,  has  not 
held  its  place  like  its  predecessors.  The  mere  plan  of  it  is  a 
burden  ;  for  the  main  '  Fredericiad  '  is  overlaid  with  endless 
digressions  and  sallies  into  general  history,  genealogical,  British, 
Austrian,  domestic  and  what  not  ;  and  the  chapters  and 
tomes  on  the  European  embroilment  are  at  once  too  much 
and  not  enough ,  despite  the  immense  toil  spent  upon  them .  But 
Carlyle  was  the  first  in  the  field  ;  no  one  had  conceived  of  the 
same  task  in  the  same  manner  ;  by  German  consent,  his  picture 
was  the  earliest  and  best  in  its  day  ;  his  aim  was  to  give  a  full 
and  living  picture  of  Frederick,  and  of  his  operations  and 
achievement,  and  of  his  place  in  the  world-drama  of  that  time. 


FRIEDRICH  23 

Frederick  seemed  to  him  the  one  great,  heroic,  and  practical 
figure  in  the  most  unheroic  of  centuries  ;  the  hero  performing 
as  king  to  the  last,  in  a  fashion  denied  to  Napoleon  afterwards  ; 
the  founder  of  Prussia,  which  seemed  to  be  the  most  solid  of 
modern  political  edifices  ;  the  incarnation  of  fact  and  efficiency 
on  the  great  scale  ;  the  triumphant  example  of  the  virtues  of 
one-man  rule  ;  the  victor  in  creative  wars  that  did  not  barrenly 
end  with  t  hemselves  or  with  mere  waste .  Carry le  and  Bismarck , 
it  is  well  known,  recognised  each  other's  qualities  ;  and  1870, 
coming  as  it  did  five  years  after  Friedrich  was  finished,  seemed 
to  lay  the  last  stone  of  the  fabric.  Carlyle  was  the  first  English- 
man to  grasp  this  fact  in  a  living  way  ;  and  his  bias,  of  course, 
was  to  give  it  its  utmost  value  and  more.  In  his  youth  he  had 
helped  to  reveal  spiritual  Germany  ;  he  now  saluted  and  made 
known  to  his  countrymen  the  founding  of  the  German  State. 
Other  English  writers  of  his  time  may  be  searched  in  vain  for 
any  such  sense  of  its  significance.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  he,  or  any  one  else,  should  prophesy  forty  years  ahead. 

Carlyle  was  sixty-three  when  the  first  two  volumes  of  the 
six  appeared,  and  seventy  before  the  work  was  complete.  His 
manner  has  changed  considerably.  He  i^  now  a  delineator  of 
life  and  manners.  The  Sauerteig  part  of  him,  though  by  no 
means  quenched,  is  less  in  evidence ;  the  invocations,  explosions, 
and  displays  of  shooting  stars,  diminish  ;  everything  is  more 
measured,  and  when  Frederick  is  not  actually  fighting  the  tone 
is  that  of  a  sardonic,  humorous  narrator,  delighting  in  the 
comedy  of  the  business.  It  is  often  snuffy  and  sordid  comedy, 
but  it  is  '  masterly  done.'  The  '  tobacco  parliament,'  with 
Grumbkow  and  Seckendorf  ;  the  whole  story  of  Voltaire  ;  and, 
above  all,  the  domestic  doings  of  the  king  in  the  interval  between 
the  second  and  third  Silesian  wars,  provide  an  admirable 
canvas.  There  is  not  a  little  of  Saint-Simon's  gift  and  temper 
in  this  latter  Carlyle  ;  there  is  the  same  biting,  vivid  habit  of 
portraiture  and  recital ;  but  Carlyle  is  mellower  and  easier  than 
Saint-Simon,  as  befits  a  man  working  a  century  after  the  event. 
Friedrich,  for  all  its  weary  ramifications,  is  the  most  amusing  of 
his  books.  It  is  only  a  pity  that  the  satire  stops  short  of  the 
hero,  for  whom  he  is  always  straining  allowances,  not  without 
visible  discomfort.  Carlyle,  as  an  ethical  teacher,  here  becomes 
markedly  fatigued .  Far  better  simply  to  have  treated  Frederick 
on  the  great  scale  as  a  pirate  who  had  altered  the  face  of 
history  ;  to  have  analysed  and  shown  the  results  ;  and  to  have 
thrown  over  the  fiction  that  there  was  any  display  of  providence, 
or  of  might -on-the -side -of -right,  in  the  whole  matter.     The 


24  CARLYLE 

experts  tell  us  that  on  the  military  and  topographic  side 
Carlyle's  work  held  its  ground,  at  any  rate,  until  the  acquisition 
of  the  new  material.  Twice  he  visited  the  scene  of  action, 
and  Froude  with  justice  admires  his  swift  grasp  and  accurate 
memory  of  the  ground.  The  'devouring  eye  and  portraying 
hand  '  of  which  Emerson  had  spoken  were  never  more  active. 

In  Friedrich  Carlyle  fashioned  for  himself  his  final  and  most 
efficient  style  of  narrative.     It  is  stripped  bare  and  close  ;  it  is 
the  entire  opposite  of  the  traditional,  periodic,  Ciceronian  style 
that  had  prevailed  since  Gibbon  ;    it  is  curt,  breathless,  tele- 
graphic, with  a  scornful  running  undertone  of  comment,  broken 
into  brief  clauses  by  the  punctuation.     It  is  an  excellent  staple 
for  a  long  work,  though  not  imitable  without  disaster.     We 
talk  of  Carlyle's  tricks  and  mannerisms  ;   in  Friedrich  they  are 
by  no  means  painful,  though  they  are  present  ;   but  here  and 
everywhere,  they  are  his  own,  they  are  himself.     The  mannerism 
of  a  school,  the  trick  of  the  followers  of  Macaulay,  which  has 
passed  into   a   thousand  leading  articles,   is   none  the   more 
admirable  because  it  gets  into  the  texture  of  such  daily  wear, 
and  forms  what  is  called  an  '  influence.'     There  is  more  style, 
more  literature,  in  an  ounce  of  Carlyle  than  in  a  ton  of  such  work. 
In  Friedrich,  too,  the  variety  of  heads  and  faces  is  greater  than 
even  in  The  French  Revolution  ;  and  there  is  more  lightness, 
even  more  charity,  in  the  drawing.     Gellert  saying  his  little 
fable  to  the  king,  and  Saldern  defying  the  king,  and  the  face  of 
the  king  at  the  last  ('  wasted,  worn,  but  beautiful  in  death, 
with  the  thin  grey  hair  parted  into  locks,  and  slightly  powdered ') 
all  are  sharply  cut,  with  more  of  the  medallion  now  about  them 
and  less  of  the  old  savage  impressionist  brushwork.     There  is 
no  real  exhaustion  or  faltering  of  handiwork  in  Friedrich,  though 
the  forced  hero-worship  revolts  the  judgment.     I  now  return  to 
tlie  books  that  are  interspersed  in  point  of  date  amongst  the 
three  great  histories. 

VII 

Fichte's  1  discourses  On  the  Nature  of  the  Scholar,  delivered 
years  before  at  Erlangen,  seem  to  have  reached  Carlyle  as  early 
as  1827.  They  count  for  a  good  deal  in  the  Lectures  on  Heroes, 
delivered  so  long  afterwards.  The  uplifter  of  the  youth  of 
Germany  saw  the  presence  of  the  '  divine  idea  '  everywhere, 
but  above  all  in  the  leading  and  shining  spirits  of  the  race. 
Conspicuous  amongst  these  is  the  scholar  (Gelehrte),  who  is  the 
fountain  of  knowledge,  irrigating  each  generation  of  fresh 
minds.    When  the  scholar  plans  for  the  order  and  progress  of 


THE  HEROES  25 

society,  and  also  wills  the  means,  he  assumes  the  authority  of 
the  '  scholar  as  ruler.'  Fichte  elsewhere  expands  this  applica- 
tion :  by  divine  right  the  ruler  can  and  must  compel,  and  the 
rest  must  obey.  The  pedigree  of  the  '  hero  as  man  of  letters  ' 
and  the  '  hero  as  king,'  and  of  the  creed  of  force -worship,  thus 
comes  into  sight.  It  is  uncertain  how  far  Carlyle  knew  Fichte 's 
later  books  and  how  far  he  developed  the  same  ideas  indepen- 
dently. The  point  of  departure  is  different.  The  Teuton 
professor  begins  with  the  cult  of  study  and  the  seed-ground  of 
the  university,  the  Scottish  historian  with  the  cult  of  power. 
It  may  be  physical  or  spiritual  power,  but  it  tends  to  be  both 
at  once  ;  and,  since  it  is  based  on  the  divinely  ordained  triumph 
or  righteousness,  it  also  tends  to  be  absolute.  It  is  clear  that 
the  latter  postulate  comes  from  Scotland  rather  than  from 
Germany,  from  Calvinism  and  Puritanism  rather  than  from 
philosophy.  But  the  two  thinkers  converge,  in  spite  of 
Carlyle's  passion  for  the  fact  and  Fichte 's  comparative  aversion 
to  the  concrete.  Yet  the  '  hero  '  is  a  more  fruitful  notion  than 
the  'scholar,'  and  Carlyle's  treatment,  as  he  marshals  Odin, 
Mahomet,  Knox,  and  Johnson,  provides  a  more  liberal  educa- 
tion than  the  spectral  vicissitudes  of  the  Ego.  He  fully  owns 
his  debt  to  the  '  robust  intellect  '  of  Fichte,  a  '  soul  so  calm, 
so  lofty,  massive,  and  immovable.' 

The  word  '  hero  '  is  as  good  as  another,  and  serves  to  denote 
and  link  together  the  types  of  energy  which  Carlyle,  judging  by 
the  event,  finds  to  have  changed  the  face  of  the  world  for  the 
better.  They  are  incommensurable  ;  they  are  all  embodiments 
of  a  divine  Idea.  The  thinker  and  man  of  science,  the  saint 
and  martyr,  are  absent  ;  the  types  chosen  are  the  god,  the 
prophet,  the  poet,  the  priest,  the  man  of  letters,  and  the  king. 
The  book  is  a  series  of  lectures  ;  it  is  all  the  better  for  being 
the  eddyings  and  iterations  of  uplifted  talk.  It  is  on  the 
whole  the  sanest  and  most  prescient  of  Carlyle's  works  ;  not  a 
welter  like  Sartor,  nor  hoarse  and  harsh  like  Latter -Day  Pamphlets, 
nor  deformed  by  an  uneasy  and  monotonous  Cseparism.  The 
chalk  sketch,  made  up  on  slender  knowledge,  of  the  old  Norse 
religion,  is  the  first  well-inspired  one  of  its  kind,  although  the 
pseudo-romantic  haze  hangs  about  it  which  had  come  down 
from  Scott  and  Gray.  Carlyle  sees  that  the  Icelandic  x  litera- 
ture is  not  all '  at  one  level  of  distance  '  from  us,  but  represents 
many  different  layers  of  culture  and  history.  He  drew  much 
on  the  prose  Edda  ;  much  later,  in  the  Early  Kings  of  Norway 
(1875),  he  was  to  turn  to  the  sagas,  the  characteristic  flower  of 
the  Northern  mind.     In  '  the  Hero  as  King,'  as  we  have  seen, 


26  CARLYLE 

he  foreshadows  his  reading  of  Cromwell ;  and  he  is  the  first, 
in  '  the  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters,'  to  exhibit  aright  the  humanity 
and  dignity  of  Johnson.  His  fierce  sympathy  with  the 
churches  militant — more  because  they  are  militant  than  because 
'they  are  churches — appears  in  his  pictures  of  Mahomet,  Knox, 
and  Luther.  Some  tribute  to  the  Roman  faith,  of  which  he  is 
usually  contemptuous,  is  implied  in  his  words  on  Dante.  He 
speaks  soundly,  and  in  the  spirit  of  Coleridge,  of  Dante's 
organising  power  as  an  artist,  and  nobly  of  his  style  and  music. 
•  His  own  style  is  in  accord  ;  for  here,  as  in  the  pages  on  Shake- 
speare, it  is  at  its  best,  and  in  the  higher  tradition  of  our  speech  : 
it  is  prose  doing  the  work  of  the  ode,  but  without  any  trespass 
on  the  style  or  forms  of  verse.  The  usual  discords  are  absent  ; 
and  we  are  glad  to  miss  that  hazy  handling  of  grandiose  abstrac- 
tions which  often  mars  Carlyle's  prophesying.  It  is  a  pity  that 
he  did  not  oftener  forget  his  mission,  and  simply  fling  himself 
on  the  greatest  things  in  poetry. 

But  the  attraction  of  history  was  as  great  as  that  of  prophecy, 
and  in  Past  and  Present  the  two  are  united.  Jocelin  l  of 
Brakelond's  chronicle  of  Abbot  Samson,  the  master  of  St. 
Edmundsbury  in  the  times  of  Henry  the  Second,  Richard  the 
First,  and  John,  attracted  Carlyle  as  a  scrap  of  true  local 
history  saved  from  the  night  of  oblivion,  and  also  as  a  record 
of  a  silent,  fighting  reformer  and  builder  after  his  own  heart. 
He  does  not  help  the  story  by  his  excess  of  diffuse  and  shouted 
commentary  ;  and  the  same  vice  makes  wearisome  his  chapters 
on  the  '  prcueiuV  which  is  ever  in  his  mind  while  he  "portrays 
the  '  past- — The  day's  work  well  done  long  ago  by  the  masterful, 
astute  abbot — who  was  by  no  means  incapable  of  a  little  quiet 
jobbery — became  to  Carlyle  a  type  of  all  such  work,  planned 
and  enforced  by  a  natural  aristocracy.  And  the  message, 
though  greatly  smothered  in  declamation,  was  a  timely  one. 
It-was  the  how  of  protect  against  laissez-JMre,  or  the  theory  that 
the  '  laws  '  of  production  and  distribution  were  inevitable  and 
beneficent.  The  later  chapters  of  Past  and  Present  are  full  of 
prophetic  flashes  which  have  since  been  justified  by  the  event. 
Carlyle  never  came  nearer  to  recommending  something  definite. 
'  Captains  of  industry,'  who  shall  see  to  it  that  the  workers 
have  an  '  interest  in  results  '  ;  a  Minister  of  Education,  who 
'  will  actually  contrive  to  get  us  taught '  ;  greater  permanence 
of  contract  ;  '  a  free  bridge  for  Emigrants  '  ;  repeal  of  the  corn 
laws  ;  these  are  some  of  the  proposals  flung  out.  Then,  in  his 
impatience  of  mere  talking  machinery  and  parliamentary 
wisdom,  he  declaims  against  '  Morrison's  Pill,'  by  which  he 


PAST  AND  PRESENT— POLITICAL  VIEWS        27 

appears  to  mean  mere  law-making  -ffj+hrmt  *-ny  nnnTrorcinn  nf 
jjvTw.irma.1  hpg.rt_a.nd  ronscienoe.  He  would  have  things  done, 
without  the  slow,  the  only  available  pacific  process  of  getting 
them  done  in  England,  The  ministerial  autocracy  of  the  recent 
crisis  might  have  satisfied  Carlyle  in  some  degree.  But,  with 
all  his  cry  for  justice,  he  never  more  than  half -perceived  the 
value  of  positive  law,  putting  as  it  does  the  brake  upon,  if  it 
can  never  quite  stop,  some  far-off  unforeseen  injustice.  He  saw 
through  the  rough,  prosaic  moral  psychology  of  the  Bentha- 
mites, with  their  '  calculus  '  of  pleasures,  but  he  did  not  see 
how  little  it  tainted  their  practical  achievements.  His  strength 
lies  elsewhere — in  the  proclamation  that  behind  all  such  doings, 
as  a  condition  of  making  the  right  law  and  administering  it  well, 
lies  the  health  of  the  national  soul.  '  Not  a  May -game  is  this 
life  '  ;  the  well-known  and  noble  peroration  is  in  his  loftiest 
manner  ;  and  Carlyle  brought  a  breath  of  upper  air,  he  sounded 
a  sharp  bugle-note  from  the  mountains,  during  the  confused  fray 
over  the  social  question  ;  and  he  soon  heard  the  answering  call 
of  Ruskin. 

Chartism,  published  three  years  earlier  (1840),  exhibits  the 
same  ideas  in  a  rougher  shape.  Sauerteig's  sudden  lantern- 
slide  presentments  of  English  history  (an  evolution  '  foreseen, 
not  unexpected,  by  Supreme  Power  ')  are  somewhat  oblivious 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  strong  man,  or  hero  who  moulds  events. 
It  would  seem  after  all  that  the  work  has  been  strangely  done, 
in  the  course  of  generations,  by  persons  mostly  fools.  Ten 
years  later,  in  the  Latter -Day  Pamphlets,  with  their  hoarse 
iteration,  Carlyle  utters  his  loudest,  longest  shout  against 
officialdom,  professional  philanthropy,  and  complacent  demo- 
cracy. The  hero  has  not  appeared  who  shall  rule  England  and 
set  her  right . 

The  book  was  partly  prompted  by  the  upheaval  of  1848,  which 
seemed  to  Carlyle  to  portend  the  reign  of  anarchy  in  Europe. 
He  sat  down  to  record  '  the  ruinous,  overwhelmed,  and  almost 
dying  condition  in  which  the  world  paints  itself  to  me.'  He  lost 
awhile  his  faith  in  the  event,  and  forgot  that  the  world,  even  if 
it  does  not  visibly  go  forward,  at  any  rate  goes  on,  recuperates, 
and  never  dies.  It  was  no  conservative  kindness  for  the  old 
order  that  made  him  lift  his  voice,  but  rather  his  contempt 
for  the  ideals  of  liberals  and  democrats,  with  their  belief  in  the 
franchise  and  in  '  model  prisons,'  and  their  soft-headed  objection 
to  hanging  fellows  who  deserved  nothing  better.  There  is 
plenty  of  mere  din  in  the  Pamphlets,  like  that  of  a  ship's  great 
screw  spinning  round  in  the  void,  with  no  water  to  churn,  and 


28  CARLYLE 

making  no  way  at  all.  But  we  are  to  remember  their  sound 
and  prophetic  passages.  Carlyle's  scorn,  vented  in  the  chapter 
on  '  Downing  Street,'  for  feeble  administration,  for  the  worship 
of  the  capitalist,  and  for  the  superfetation  of  American  wealth 
and  luxury,  is  healthy  enough.  While  too  amorphous  to  live, 
and  too  unconstructive,  the  Latter -Day  Pamphlets  did  good 
with  their  phrases  that  festered. 

The  Reform  Act  of  1 867  drew  from  Carlyle  the  fierce  incoherent 
pamphlet  entitled  Shooting  Niagara  :  and  After.1  It  is  strange 
to  see  him  drifting  in  his  old  age  into  a  kind  of  disconsolate 
Whiggery.  The  remnant  of  his  hopes  is  invested  in  the  chance 
of  the  landed  aristocracy,  with  their  good  bearing  and  inherited 
authority,  becoming  local  kings  or  administrators.  To  merit 
this  position,  no  doubt  they  must  change  themselves  profoundly; 
but  then  they  are  to  be  replenished  from  below,  by  the  captains 
of  industry  '  who,  though  somewhat  '  Orsonish  '  in  manners, 
are  yet  rulers  of  men  duly  certified  by  the  event.  In  November 
1870  he  burst  out  once  again,  in  The  Times,  applauding  the 
confiscation  of  Alsace-Lorraine.  This  act  is  commended,  he 
says,  by  divine  law  and  the  facts  of  history.  He  praises  '  noble, 
patient,  deep,  pious,  and  solid  Germany,'  and  sees,  in  her  rise 
to  be  '  Queen  of  the  Continent,' '  the  hope-fullest  public  fact  that 
has  occurred  in  my  time.' 

When  he  had  purged  his  mind  of  the  Pamphlets  and  had  not 
yet  settled  down  to  Friedrich,  Carlyle  was  happily  moved,  in 
1850-1,  to  write  The  Life  of  John  Sterling,  the  most  humane  and 
harmonious  among  his  compositions  of  middle  length .  Sterling, 
who  had  died  seven  years  before,  had  done  nothing — his  books 
being  stillborn — but  leave  behind  him  amongst  his  friends  a 
vivid  kindling  memory,  which  had  been  ill  satisfied  by  Arch- 
deacon Hare's  clerically -toned  memoir.  He  would  quickly 
have  been  forgotten  but  for  Carlyle's  art,  which  is  never  more 
delicate  or  better  sustained  than  in  this  affectionate  portrait. 
Unconsciously,  the  book  is  a  truer  mirror  of  Carlyle  himself 
than  Froude's  perverted  skilful  account.  It  shows  the  essential 
kindness  behind  his  show  of  acerbity.  The  picture  of  the 
friendly  wrangling  of  the  pair,  '  not  divided  except  in  opinion,' 
and  the  deeper  notes  of  musing  reminiscence,  rising  to  an 
elegiac  gravity  which  is  never  blind  or  hysterical,  reveal  the 
real  Carlyle.  'There  are  wonders  in  true  affection.'  The 
water-colour  landscapes,  and  the  pictures  of  individuals  smaller 
and  greater  (the  most  noted  being  Coleridge)  are  of  the  same 
quality,  and  have  the  same  spontaneity,  as  Carlyle's  talk  or 
letters.    Sterling  himself,  in  retrospect,  appeals  to  him  not  only 


LIFE  OF  JOHN  STERLING  29 

as  a  cherished  companion  and  sacred  friend,  but  as  a  type  of  his 

age  : 

It  is  in  the  history  of  such  vehement,  trenchant,  far-shining  and 
yet  intrinsically  light  and  volatile  souls,  missioned  into  this  epoch 
to  seek  their  way  there,  that  we  best  see  what  a  confused  epoch  it  is. 

'  Light  and  volatile  '  may  be  a  thought  too  harsh  ;  but  Sterling 
had  run  through,  in  a  somewhat  passionate  and  headlong  way, 
the  characteristic  phases  of  the  young  English  mind  at  that 
time  ;  had  started  as  a  doctrinaire  radical ;  had  been  shocked 
out  of  that  creed  by  the  stress  of  circumstance  ;  had  come 
under  the  spell  of  Coleridge  ;  had  taken  orders  for  a  brief  while, 
and  quitted  them  ;  and  had  ended,  if  anything,  as  a  Carlylean, 
who  was  at  last  ready  to  find  some  salvation  in  Goethe  and  to 
launch  into  the  open.  The  biographer  is  full  of  the  wisdom 
of  the  heart.  He  is  not  sentimental,  and  extenuates  nothing  ; 
and  the  book,  allowing  for  eruptions  and  iterations,  is  a  noble 
and  pious  memorial. 

VIII 

History  is  usually  invoked  to  instruct  the  present  in  the 
wisdom  of  the  past  ;  but  Carlyle  likes  to  invert  this  process  and 
to  read  the  past  in  the  light  of  the  present.  His  picture  of  the 
French  Revolution  is  visibly  affected  by  his  feeling  that  in  the 
years  after  the  Reform  Bill  parliaments,  nobility,  lawyers,  and 
churchmen  alike  were  impotent  to  mend  the  lot  of  the  poor  or 
even  to  perceive  the  nature  of  the  social  problem.  Faith  was 
the  motive  power  of  Cromwell,  the  spring  of  his  efficiency  ; 
there  was  no  such  faith,  no  such  man,  in  Carlyle 's  own  day. 
The  new  franchise  only  led  to  a  greater  confusion  of  counsel  by 
a  larger  number  of  fools,  whom  there  was  no  Frederick  to  drill 
into  sense,  or  at  least  into  obedience.  The  chronicle  of  Abbot 
Samson  shows  how  these  thoughts  preoccupied  Carlyle.  He 
may  have  been  right  ;  but  they  gave  to  his  exhibitions  of  the 
past  a.  certain  twist  which  is  a  more  serious  drawback  than  his 
picturesque  bias  in  the  choice  of  material.  One  deep  misconcep- 
tion of  history  he  encouraged.  In  the  introduction  to  the 
Cromwell  he  applies  the  notion  of  the  '  heroic  '  to  whole  periods 
of  time.  Study  the  heroic  ages,  he  says  ;  the  '  unheroic  '  only 
merit  oblivion.  But  which,  we  ask,  are  these  ?  No  doubt 
the  eighteenth  century,  apart  from  Frederick,  is  judged  to  be 
one  of  them  ;  indeed  Carlyle  says  as  much.  His  own  age  he 
reckons  no  better.     The  world,  however,  will  persist  in  studying 


30  CARLYLE 

the  ages  of  seed-time  ;  when  great  men  are  scarce  and  the 
sages  and  poets  are  silent,  but  when  a  Renaissance,  or  a  Re- 
formation, is  being  prepared.  Such  a  time  was  the  fifteenth 
century  in  England.  Carlyle's  view  reflects  the  distaste  of 
an  artist  for  an  uncongenial  subject.  It  also  accords  with  the 
contempt,  which  grew  upon  him,  for  the  '  dim  common  popula- 
tions '  of  mankind.  They,  he  is  convinced,  have  not  the  ghost 
of  an  instinct  for  the  means  of  their  own  salvation.  They 
have  no  share  in  the  realisation  of  the  divine  idea.  Long  before, 
Carry le  had  proclaimed  that  such  an  idea  works  itself  out,  not 
only  vertically  through  long  periods  of  time,  but  horizontally, 
through  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  through  the  '  filaments,' 
that  unite  classes,  and  peoples,  and  races,  in  the  same  age. 
Their  wrongs  and  claims,  we  are  still  told,  are  immense  and 
indubitable  ;  but  they  are  blind.  It  is  a  pity  that  Carlyle 
forgot  the  teaching  of  Sartor. 

One  source  of  the  discomfort  felt  in  reading  his  histories  may 
be  briefly  noticed.  They  are  often  called  epics,  or  dramas,  or 
picture-galleries,  or  a  series  of  lightning-flashes,  or  the  like. 
And  they  also  profess  to  read  events  in  the  light  of  certain 
universal  principles.  But  how  does  Carlyle  make  a  rational 
comiexion  between  these  principles  and  the  scenes  represented  ? 
When  the  play  is  over  and  the  lamps  are  down,  we  are  at  a  loss 
to  answer.  Secondary  causes,  enhghtening  uniformities,  proxi- 
mate explanations,  are  what  we  do  not  end  by  perceiving.  The 
sharp  impression  of  things  seen  remains,  the  primary  tenets 
remain  ;  but  there  is  an  ugly  gap  between,  which  we  must  go 
to  other  historians  to  see  made  good.  The  reason  of  this 
omission  may  be  found  in  Carlyle's  scorn  and  lack  of  science. 
Figures,  and  the  growth  of  law  and  institutions,  are  not  in  his 
line.  Sometimes,  as  in  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  he  embarks  on 
these  waters,  but  in  truth  he  does  not  think  the  voyage  worth 
while.  He  is  not  like  Thucydides,  who  can  both  depict  and 
reason. 

Carlyle  reduces  the  philosophy  of  history  to  a  single  article  : 
There  is  one  God,  and  right  will  at  last  prevail.  So  far,  this  is 
as  simple  as  the  creed  of  Islam.  The  methods  of  providence 
may,  no  doubt,  be  distressing  and  ambiguous  through  long 
periods  of  time.  But  any  institution,  race,  or  nation  which  in 
the  end  has  proved  to  work,  and  to  be  stable,  can  only  have 
done  so  by  virtue  of  some  divine  right  inherent  in  it.  Make  the 
test  long  enough,  and  only  what  is  justified  will  survive.  This 
seems  the  fairest  statement  of  the  much  debated  doctrine  of 
*  might  and  right.'     Carlyle,  however,  complicates  it  by  his  view 


MIGHT  AND  RIGHT  31 

that  the  '  hero  as  king  '  is  always  the  chosen  instrument  of 
providence,  and  by  neglecting  both  the  play  of  impersonal 
forces  and  the  intelligence — call  it  even  the  '  horse-sense  ' — of 
the  mass  of  mankind.  But  his  real  thesis  is  that  '  might  and 
right,1  so  fearfully  discrepant  at  first,  are  ever  in  the  long 
run  one  and  the  same.'  Here  Carlyle  has  defined  for  thousands, 
from  whom  other  doctrines  have  fallen  away,  their  residual 
faith  ;  and  it  has  a  great  emotional  and  fortifying  power. 
Whether  it  will  bear  looking  into  is  another  matter.  '  At  any 
moment,'  says  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  a  keen  critic,  '  the  test  of 
success  may  be  precarious,  while  that  of  justice  is  infallible.' 
It  would  have  been  more  natural  for  the  prophet  of  righteousness 
to  adopt  the  criterion  of  justice,  and  not  the  criterion  of  the 
event.  But  for  two  reasons  he  would  not  do  so.  First  of 
all,  I  judge,  he  dimly  felt  the  truth  that  all  civilised  achieve- 
ment is  based  on  most  ambiguous  beginnings  and  is  evolved 
through  an  infinite  amount  of  incidental  egotism,  rapacity,  and 
injustice  ;  and  he  demanded  some  robust  faith  that  could 
survive,  and  could  also  seem  to  explain,  such  a  spectacle. 
Secondly,  he  was  drawn  one  way  by  his  passion  for  righteousness, 
and  another  way  by  his  passion  for  personality  ;  which,  in  its 
full  energy,  is  often  '  frightfully  discrepant  '  with  righteousness. 
It  is  not  true  to  say  that  he  approves  all  wars  of  successful 
conquest  ;  many  such  wars,  he  tells  us  in  Friedrich,  are  sheer 
waste.  He  does  not  say  that  victory  is  always  a  stately 
exhibition  of  providence.  He  falls  back  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
'  long  run.'  But  how  long  a  run  ?  The  case  of  a  small  heroic 
nation  being  hopelessly  beaten  out  of  existence  by  pirates  is  a 
case  that  he  does  not  consider.  Frederick's  performances  in 
Silesia  are  warranted,  we  are  led  to  suppose,  by  the  ultimate 
consolidation  of  Prussia.  But  in  that  case,  why  drag  in 
providence,  and  why  not  say  with  Treitschke  that  the  State  is 
above  right  and  wrong  ?  However,  the  problem  of  the  scienti- 
fic frontier  between  ethics  and  politics,  or  between  the  canons 
of  private  and  public  behaviour,  is  not  of  Carlyle 's  making,  and 
the  only  thing  to  be  said  against  him  is  that  he,  like  others, 
has  failed  to  solve  it.  But  he  did  not  leave  the  question  un- 
altered ;  he  tried  earnestly  to  test  his  peculiar  faith  upon  the 
unsoftened  facts  of  history.  If  we  think  the  test  broke  in  his 
hands,  that  may  be  the  fault  not  of  Carlyle 's  but  of  the  nature 
of  things.  It  remains  to  speak  of  him  as  a  writer,  with  a 
prefatory  note  on  his  literary  judgements. 


32  CARLYLE 


IX 


One  of  the  best  and  worst  of  our  critics,  Carlyle  is  full  of 
unconscious  ingratitude.  He  despises  Rousseau  ;  but  no 
Rousseau,  no  Carlyle  ;  the  modern  inventor  of  the  literary 
confession  is  the  source  and  fountain,  if  any  one  man  can  be  so 
called,  of  Romanticism,  and  in  a  score  of  ways  Carlyle  is  a 
romantic.  Voltaire  he  treats  as  void  of  reverence  and  of  the 
higher  insight  ;  but,  again,  Carlyle,  in  his  own  despite,  in- 
herits from  the  Voltairian  '  enlightenment,'  or  how  else  could  he 
have  come  to  discard  what  he  termed  '  old  Jewish  rags  '  ? 
It  is  singular  how  many  great  or  good  writers  of  all  ages 
he  maltreats  at  one  time  or  another  ;  he  speaks  in  disparage- 
ment, being  usually  in  the  wrong,  of  Scott,  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Shelley,  and  Keats  ;  even  of  Virgil. 
He  thought  that  the  poets  were  too  much  concerned  with 
'  vocables,'  though  he  was  instinctively  studious  of  vocables 
in  his  own  prose.  He  is  most  unsafe  as  a  critic.  Yet  safety  is 
not  everj'thing  in  a  critic.  Time  sifts  away  the  naughtinesses  of 
Carlyle ,  and  they  now  mislead  no  man ,  and  are  never  dull .  Often 
they  get  home.  Who  can  forget  his  word  on  Walt  Whitman, 
'  It  is  as  though  the  town  bull  had  learned  to  hold  a  pen  '  ; 
or  on  Baudelaire,  '  Was  ever  anything  so  bright -infernal  ?  ' 
And  time  keeps  fresh  his  inspirations  also.  The  review  of 
Lockhart's  Life  of  Burns,  with  its  praise  of  the  '  little  Valclusa- 
fountain  '  of  the  songs  ;  the  repeated  vindications  of  Johnson, 
and  in  passing  of  Bos  well,  which  have  really  fixed  the  English 
estimate  of  both  writers,  and  have,  or  ought  to  have,  effaced 
Macaulay's  paradoxes  ;  above  all,  the  praises  of  the  greatest, 
of  Goethe,  of  Dante,  and  of  Shakespeare,  which  befit  the  theme 
— these  are  the  salt  of  Carlyle's  critical  writings.  He  speaks 
mostly  of  them  as  men — as  prophets  and  sages  ;  but  what  he 
lets  fall  concerning  art  and  song  has  the  same  accent.  He  might 
talk  himself  hoarse  about  the  Eternities  and  Immensities,  but 
his  eye  was  fixed  on  them  nevertheless  ;  and  there  are  few  of 
whom  this  can  at  any  time  be  said. 

People  talked  from  the  first,  and  talk  still,  against  '  Carry lese,' 
and  cried  out  that  it  was  bad  in  itself  and  a  bad  model.  The 
grammarians  picked  it  to  pieces,  with  its  ellipses,  gestures, 
capitals,  interjections,  iterations,  and  so  following.  All  that 
is  true  from  the  grammarian's  point  of  view,  and  it  has  been  an 
easy  game  now  for  about  eighty  years.  But  it  does  not  much 
matter.  The  truth  is  that  as  we  look  back  on  the  English  prose 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  this  old  man,  if  anybody,  pre- 


TALK  AND  STYLE  33 

dominates  in  it.  With  all  his  tricks,  with  certain  real  and  too 
manifest  vices  of  language,  he  has  not  only  a  millionaire's 
stock  and  fund  of  speech,  but  a  certain  fundamental  and  nail- 
hitting  Tightness  in  the  use  of  it.  The  vices  are  those  of  a  man  ; 
the  bad  pages  are  those  of  a  man  raging,  at  any  rate,  and  not 
mere  musical  wind,  like  so  much  of  Ruskin,  or  sheer  sterility, 
like  so  much  of  Newman.  Carlyle  has  let  himself  be  misjudged, 
because  in  the  region  of  ideas  his  power  of  expression  is  so 
much  greater  than  his  range  of  thought  ;  but  then  this  is  not 
his  only  region,  perhaps  not  his  more  native  one  ;  and  some 
distinctions  may  be  made,  in  order  to  see  wherein  his  strength, 
if  he  be  taken  purely  as  a  writer,  lies  : 

He  rolled  forth  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  by  the  hour  together  in 
the  very  words,  with  all  the  nicknames,  expletives,  and  ebullient 
tropes  that  were  so  familiar  to  us  in  print,  with  the  full  voice,  the 
Dumfries  burr,  and  the  kindling  eye  which  all  his  friends  recall.  It 
seemed  to  me,  the  first  time  that  I  sat  at  his  fireside  and  listened  to 
him,  that  it  was  an  illusion.  I  seemed  to  be  already  in  the  Elysian 
fields  listening  to  the  spirit  rather  than  to  the  voice  of  the  mighty 
'  Sartor.'  Could  printed  essay  and  spoken  voice  be  so  absolutely 
the  same  ? 

This  evidence,  borne  by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,1  gives  a  key  to 
Carlyle  as  a  writer.  He  talked  for  half  a  century,  in  number- 
less letters,  journals,  monologues,  and  books.  He  did  not  talk 
like  books  ;  his  books  talked  like  him.  All  '  models  of  style  ' 
and  the  like  count  for  little  ;  they  colour  or  discolour  the  native 
stream  for  a  moment,  but  they  are  soon  absorbed.  With  its 
volume  and  onset,  its  long  sounding  course,  its  fertilising  range, 
its  turbid  tumultuous  rapids,  that  stream  is  after  all  the  largest 
in  our  present  field  of  country.  The  current  gathers  slowly 
and  the  first  stretches  are  unpromising.  The  Life  of  Schiller 
was  published  at  thirty  ;  it  lacks  accent ;  were  it  unsigned, 
some  future  thesis-monger  might  have  to  prove  that  Carlyle 
wrote  it.  To  trace  the  essays  chronologically  is  to  mark  the 
accent  sharpening,  the  touch  of  commonplace  and  rigmarole 
dwindling,  the  incandescence  growing  steadier,  the  fated  style 
emerging.  Meantime,  Carlyle  also  becomes  an  easy,  manly, 
companionable  writer.  But  of  his  true  style  he  is  scarcely  in 
regular  command  before  the  age  of  thirty-five,  though  it  is 
announced  by  many  a  sally.  It  is  just  before  that  age  that  his 
younger  prose,  whether  lyrical  or  monitory,  culminates.  In 
the  elegy  on  Goethe,  in  Characteristics,  and  in  some  of  the  pages 
upon  Burns,  it  is  noticeably  pure  and  untroubled.     There  is  a 

VOL.  I.  0 


34  CARLYLE 

specially  tender  and  harmonious  strain  in  his  diction  at  this 
period.  Like  Shakespeare  when  he  turned  to  his  greater 
tragedies,  Carlyle  begins  to  torment  expression  when  he  embarks 
on  harsher  and  deeper  matter.  Expression  is  wrestled  with, 
'  as  in  a  war-embrace,'  and  is  at  last  victorious.  Carlyle  may 
fairly  remind  us  of  Shakespeare  in  two  respects  :  in  the  immense 
resources  of  his  language,  and  in  his  power  to  extort  from 
language  its  blessing.  The  comparison  need  not  go  further  ; 
for  one  thing,  Carlyle,  however  much  he  may  describe  and 
interpret,  has  none  of  the  dramatist's  self-identifying  gift  ; 
he  is  always  and  invincibly  himself.  The  metaphysical  prose 
of  Sartor  shows  one  kind  of  his  power  :  other  kinds  are  seen 
in  his  landscapes,  his  battles  and  riots  and  tumults,  his  flowing 
sardonic  narratives,  his  pictures  of  life  and  manners  ;  all 
these  swell  the  grand  total.  Everywhere,  of  course,  there 
is  the  unmistakeable  Carlylese,  on  which  a  little  must  be 
said. 

It  is  late  in  the  day  to  play  the  friendly  schoolmaster  to  the 
idiom  of  Sartor  and  the  other  '  prophetic  books.'  There  is 
little  to  add  to  the  strictures  of  Sterling,  quoted  in  the  Life 
(part  ii.  ch.  ii).  Barbarous  coinages,  '  new  and  erroneous 
locutions,'  '  the  constant  recurrence  of  some  words  in  a  quaint 
and  queer  connexion  '  ('  quite,'  '  almost,'  '  nay,'  '  not  without,' 
and  the  like)  ;  Germanised  compounds,  frequency  of  inversion, 
fatiguing  over-emphasis  ;  '  occasional  jerking  and  almost 
spasmodic  excitement ' — such  are  the  reproaches,  to  which 
others  can  be  added  :  sentences  of  telegraphic  cast,  whimsical 
archaic  use  of  capitals,  italics,  and  so  following.  These  things 
besprinkle  both  the  high  bravura  passages,  and  also  the 
grotesque -humorous  commentary.  Here  Carlyle  loves  to 
repair  to  some  feigned  spokesman,  Teufelsdrockh  or  Sauerteig 
or  '  an  author  we  have  met  with  before,'  his  wilder  self  to  wit, 
upon  whom  to  father  extravagance.  Such  alarums  relieve  the 
march  of  the  discourse.  But  the  idiom  is  still  everywhere, 
and  its  origins  have  been  rather  unsuccessfully  conjectured. 

Two  features  stand  out  from  the  rest.  One  is  the  noise  of  the 
style,  and  the  strident  emphasis,  betokened  by  the  trick  of 
italicising,  which  Carlyle  uses  more  and  more  to  the  last  ; 
and  the  other  is  the  intense  self -consciousness  of  all  his  writing, 
good  and  bad  alike  ;  the  self -reference,  the  self -lashing,  the  self- 
scrutiny,  the  self -distrust ;  a  quality  which  is  deep  down  in 
the  man,  and  which  sometimes  mars  the  form,  even  as  egoism 
of  another  and  nobler  cast  does  not  mar  the  form  of  Dante. 
On  the  whole,  Carlyle's  much-debated  '  style  '  is  his  natural 


STYLES  35 

speech,  not  something  affected  or  excogitated,  and  he  could 
not  and  would  not  change  it,  any  more  than  the  tones  of  his 
voice,  for  a  hundred  Sterlings  or  a  thousand  reviewers. 


Carlyle  meets  the  tax  laid  upon  his  English  in  one  way  when 
he  is  holding  forth  by  way  of  monition,  exposition,  counsel,  or 
tirade,  and  in  another  way  when  he  is  presenting  occurrences  or 
things  seen.  The  distinction  is  worth  developing.  He  may 
be  said  to  have  a  small  capital  of  large  ideas  ;  and  he  has  a 
limitless  fund  of  words,  and  of  the  best  words  too,  for  their 
utterance.  He  therefore  repeats  himself,  in  this  field,  without 
measure.  But  then  it  is  his  business  to  do  so,  as  an  educator, 
as  a  natural  orator.  He  pounds  away  for  half  a  century  ; 
iterating  catchwords  with  a  boisterous  self-confidence  beyond 
parallel,  straining  his  voice,  circling  round  the  same  notions  ; 
but  he  is  never  flat ;  from  that  risk  he  is  saved  by  his  sheer  gift 
of  words.  If  three-quarters  of  his  sermons  were  gone,  we 
could  judge  of  his  ideas  perfectly  from  the  remainder  ;  nothing 
would  be  intellectually  lost.  Yet  we  would  not  wish  to  lose 
anything  he  has  said  ;  for  it  is  fired  by  an  undying  faith  and 
sustained  by  an  unfailing  style.  And  much  of  it  is  perfectly 
said  ;  and  yet,  again,  from  the  very  nature  of  Carlyle 's  gift,  it  is 
seldom  finally  said.  Plastic  skill,  economy,  and  proportion, 
we  do  not  always  get  from  him  ;  but  the  life -long  continuance 
of  such  noble  talk,  kept  at  the  same  height  and  fearless  of 
repetition,  is  an  earnest  of  the  soul  behind  and  the  instrument 
of  its  power. 

Carlyle  meets  one  test  which  critics  tell  us  to  put  when  we 
wish  to  try  the  metal  of  an  author  quickly.  How  does  he  speak, 
we  may  ask,  of  death,  of  love,  and  of  nature  ? 

The  week-day  man,  who  was  one  of  us,  has  put  on  the  garment 
of  Eternity,  and  become  radiant  and  triumphant ;  the  Present  is 
ail  at  once  the  Past ;  Hope  is  suddenly  cut  away,  and  only  the 
backward  vistas  of  Memory  remain,  shone  on  by  a  light  that  pro- 
ceeds not  from  this  earthly  sun.     (Death  of  Goethe,  1832.) 

Two  plain  precepts  there  are.  Dost  thou  intend  a  kindness  to 
thy  beloved  one  ?  Do  it  straightway,  while  the  fateful  Future  is 
not  yet  here.  Has  thy  heart's  friend  carelessly  or  cruelly  stabbed 
into  thy  heart  ?  Oh,  forgive  him  !  Think  how,  when  thou  art 
dead,  he  will  punish  himself.     (Journal,  December  15,  1870.) 

But  sunwards,  lo  you  !  how  it  towers  sheer  up,  a  world  of  Moun- 
tains, the  diadem  and  centre  of  the  mountain  region  !     A  hundred 


36  CARLYLE 

and  a  hundred  savage  peaks,  in  the  last  light  of  Day  ;  all  glowing, 
of  gold  and  amethyst,  like  giant  spirits  of  the  wilderness  ;  there  in 
their  silence,  in  their  solitude,  even  as  on  the  night  when  Noah's 
Deluge  first  dried  !     {Sartor,  1834.) 

There  are  hundreds  of  such  passages,  which  begin  to  explain 
the  remark,  usually  misquoted,  that  was  made  by  Goethe  to 
Eckermann  (July  25,  1827)  : 

Carlyle  is  a  moral  force  of  great  importance.  There  is  in  him 
much  for  the  future,  and  we  cannot  foresee  what  he  will  produce 
and  effect. 

The  above  quotations  are  taken  from  his  earlier  books.  But 
consider,  again,  the  Inaugural  Address,  delivered  at  the  age  of 
seventy -one.  Nothing  is  new,  but  the  old  themes  are  handled 
with  undiminished  force.  Two  years  later,  Carlyle  was  asked 
to  give  a  valedictory  address  to  the  same  young  Edinburgh 
hearers.  His  letter  dechning  the  proposal  has  still  the  same 
accent,  high  and  moving  ;  the  style  keeps  its  savour  to  the  end  : 

Bid  them,  in  my  name,  if  they  still  love  me,  fight  the  good  fight, 
and  quit  themselves  like  men,  in  the  warfare,  to  which  they  are  as 
if  conscript  and  consecrated,  and  which  lies  ahead.  Tell  them  to 
consult  the  eternal  oracles  (not  yet  inaudible,  nor  ever  to  become 
so,  when  worthily  inquired  of),  and  to  disregard,  nearly  altogether, 
in  comparison,  the  temporary  noises,  menacings,  and  deliriums. 

The  same  is  true  of  Carlyle 's  more  private  utterances.  In 
the  language  of  his  heart,  as  disclosed  in  the  sketch  of  his  wife 
in  the  Reminiscences,  or  in  the  outpourings  of  his  journal,  the 
old  elegiac  power  is  turned  to  new  and  sad  uses.  In  these 
fierce  self-reproaches  that  are  almost  fanatical,  revealing  as  they 
do  a  pride  and  tenderness  of  heart  which  torture  him  with  the 
memory  of  the  smallest  unkindness,  real  or  supposed,  offered 
to  the  dead,  the  theme  is  uniform,  while  the  variations  are 
infinite  ;  but  the  language  is  responsive,  to  the  last  shade. 
The  world  took  these  confessions  to  the  letter,  at  Carlyle's 
expense  ;  often  they  only  show  his  noble  excess  of  scruple. 
In  such  pages  he  never  thought  of  how  he  was  writing  ;  but 
nothing  better  shows  his  sheer  power  as  a  writer. 

This  habit  of  wheeling  over  and  over  the  same  spot  disappears 
when  the  work  in  hand  compels  Carlyle  to  get  forward  ;  when  a 
tale  has  to  be  told  or  a  scene  exhibited.  In-this  case  the  matter 
is  continually  changing,  and  it  is  given  to  him,  and  not  spun 
out  of  him  ;  and  another  fount,  as  printers  say,  of  language  is 
drawn  upon.     His  narratives  are  not  all  equally  good  ;    he 


DESCRIPTIVE  STYLE  37 

often  merely  alludes  to,  or  takes  oracularly  for  granted,  some- 
thing which  ought  to  have  been  related,  and  which  the  reader 
does  not  know.  This  defect  is  often  seen  in  The  French 
Revolution  :  in  Friedrich  and  in  The  Life  of  Sterling  there  is 
more  clearness  and  more  continuity.  Still,  Carlyle's  manage- 
ment of  the  level  parts  of  a  history  or  biography  can  easily  be 
under-estimated  ;  it  ought  not  to  be  obscured  by  the  excellence 
of  the  great  coloured  passages  which  are  quoted  everywhere. 
When  he  chooses,  he  tells  a  plain  story  wonderfully  well,  though 
not  of  course  with  the  classical  thrift  of  Hume,  or  with  the 
ordered  and  spaced-out  rhetoric  of  Macaulay.  '  There  are  thin 
tints  of  style,'  as  he  says  somewhere  of  Goethe,  '  shades  of 
ridicule,  or  tenderness,  or  solemnity,  resting  over  large  spaces, 
and  so  slight  as  almost  to  be  evanescent.'  The  account  of  the 
boyhood  of  Friedrich,  of  the  Spanish  adventure  of  John 
Sterling,  of  his  own  Irish  or  Parisian  journeys,  are  models  of 
narrative,  some  of  them  only  set  down  for  his  own  eye.  He  is  a 
master  of  prose  that  is  just  doing  the  day's  work  of  prose  ; 
and  his  indescribable  nerve  and  virility  give  him  an  advantage 
over  more  reserved  and  finished  writers,  like  Thackeray  or 
Newman,  of  his  own  time .  He  has ,  when  all  is  said,  a  better  eye 
and  a  better  mind  than  most  of  them,  and  he  gives  a  stronger 
satisfaction.  Genius,  like  generalship,  is  not  all  grand  strategy  ; 
much  of  it  comes  down  to  a  series  of  small  strokes,  each  of  them 
going  an  inch  further  than  mere  talent  can  manage. 

This  is  when  Carlyle  is  moving  forward  ;  but  when  he  stops 
to  describe  heads,  or  landscapes,  or  scenes  of  blood  and  disorder, 
or  sarcastic -comic  interludes,  then,  no  doubt,  we  are  in  presence 
of  his  central  gift.  These  passages  are  not  patched  in  ;  they 
come  naturally  in  their  places.  His  ear  was  at  least  as  keen  as 
his  eye,  and  his  impressions  of  voices,  modes  of  laughter,  and 
inarticulate  sounds  and  noises,  find  the  right  words  instantly. 
Such  is  the  well-known  portrait  of  Thiers,  flung  on  paper  for 
Carlyle's  private  eye  after  a  meeting  in  Paris  in  1851  ;  we  hear 
the  '  good-humoured  treble  croak,  which  bustles  itself  on  in 
continuous  copiousness,'  and  the  '  monotonous  low  gurgling 
key,  with  occasional  sharp  yelping  warbles,'  all  proceeding  from 
the  '  placidly  sharp  fat  face,  puckered  eye  wards.'  But  here  is 
a  less  familiar  sketch,  taken  from  certain  old  discarded  chapters 
on  the  early  Stuarts.  Gardiner  describes  the  career  of 
Alexander  Leighton,1  author  of  Sion's  Plea  against  Prelacy 
(1630),  and  fits  it  into  his  story  ;  and  he  has  also  duly  read,  and 
summarises,  that  work,  which  Carlyle  declares  '  will  never 
more  be  read  by  any  mortal,'  and  which  he  does  not  summarise . 


58  CARLYLE 

Instead,  he  presents  Leighton's  headpiece,  after  long  poring 
upon  some  old  print  of  it  : 

A  monstrous  pyramidal  head,  evidently  full  of  confused  harsh 
logic,  toil,  sorrow,  and  much  other  confusion,  wrinkly  brows  arched 
up  partly  in  wonder,  partly  in  private  triumph  over  many  things, 
most  extensive  cheeks,  fat,  yet  flaccid,  puckered,  corrugated,  flow- 
ing down  like  a  flood  of  corrugation,  wherein  the  mouth  is  a  mere 
corrugated  eddy,  frowned  over  by  an  amorphous  bulwark  of  nose  ; 
the  whole,  you  would  say,  supported  by  the  neck-dress,  by  the 
doublet-collar  and  front  resting  on  it,  surmounted  by  deluges  of 
tangled  tattered  hair  :  such  is  the  alarming  physiognomy  of  Dr. 
Leighton,  medical  gentleman,  etc. 

We  may  be  glad  that  the  study  of  physiognomy  was  a  kind  of 
Lavaterish  superstition  with  Carlyle.  He  looked  at  Southey  or 
Daniel  Webster  in  the  flesh  ;  he  is  said  to  have  hung  up  the 
pictures  of  Cromwell  and  other  historical  persons  before  him 
while  he  wrote.  When  he  can,  he  likes  to  begin  with  the  face 
and  voice  of  the  man  whom  he  is  describing.  He  was  now  and 
then  comically  beguiled,  as  in  the  case  of  the  innocent -looking 
practical  jester  Squire  ;  and  often  there  is  a  ragged  cutting  edge 
to  the  description.  But  the  coloured  photography  of  Macaulay 
and  other  '  vivid '  writers  is  killed  at  once  by  the  side  of  Carlyle 's 
presentments.  He  is  alone  of  his  kind,  and  his  imitators  are 
below  notice.  It  is  the  same  with  his  incidental  landscapes, 
which  are  perfect ;  such  are  the  visions  of  London  and  of  the 
Vale  of  Glamorgan  in  The  Life  of  Sterling.  Each  of  his  major 
books,  Sartor,  Past  and  Present,  and  the  three  histories,  has  its 
own  different  stamp  of  descriptive  genius.  As  time  goes  on, 
Carlyle  applies  his  gift  more  and  more  to  realistic  purposes  ; 
leaves  behind  the  grotesque-sublime-fantastic  and  big  confused 
scenes  of  tumult,  and  draws  with  a  minuter  veracity,  often 
highly  humorous.  This  change  appears  in  Friedrich,  where  the 
battles  on  the  one  part,  and  the  domestic  passages  on  the 
other,  mark  the  extremes  of  his  craft.  Leaving  out  the  domain 
of  Ruskin,  there  is  certainly  no  such  gallery  in  English  as  the 
works  of  Carlyle.  His  ideal,  we  know,  as  an  historian  or 
chronicler,  was  to  recover  the  life  of  things,  either  long  buried 
or  as  they  fleeted  by  him  ;  and,  though  unhappy  in  some  ways, 
he  was  happy  in  this,  that  his  gift  exactly  fitted,  as  it  doubt- 
less determined,  his  ideal.  The  result,  no  doubt,  is  scarcely 
commensurate  with  his  gift.  Such  a  vision,  such  a  moral 
passion,  such  a  fountain  of  language  !  Yet  they  did  not,  as 
might  be  hoped,  produce  any  large  harmonious  masterpiece  of 
thought  or  art.     Whim,  and  temper,  and  the  gaps  in  his  philo- 


ACHIEVEMENT— MRS.  CARLYLE-  CAROLINE  FOX  39 

sophy,  and  want  of  construction  and  economy,  disabled  Carlyle 
from  such  achievements.  But  when  all  is  said,  he  is  a  real 
prophet,  if  not  precisely  a  '  sage  '  ;  it  will  be  long  before  his 
prophecies  and  counsels  are  so  fully  realised  as  to  be  obsolete. 
The  battle  goes  on  for  ever,  for  which  he  sounded  the  call  to 
arms.  And  to  '  recover  the  life  of  things,'  past  or  present,  as 
Carlyle  does,  and  with  his  fidelity  and  intensity,  has  been 
granted  to  no  English  writer  since  he  died.  The  great  ship  is 
not  wholly  weather-tight,  its  freight  is  not  all  precious  still ; 
but  its  displacement,  its  onset,  are  hard  to  match  in  its  own 
day  ;  and  the  roar  of  its  guns,  the  blast  of  its  syren,  cannot 
soon  be  forgotten. 

XI 

Carlyle 's  talk  and  writing  are  full  of  a  shearing  kind  of 
satire  ;  and  at  times  there  is  a  mellower  suffusing  humour. 
He  was  not  exactly  a  wit  ;  and  the  deficiency  is  supplied  by 
Mrs.  Carlyle,  who  has  left  nothing  except  her  correspondence. 
He  was  delighted,  at  any  rate  in  retrospect,  when  her  wit  singed 
his  own  beard.  Not  all  were  equally  grateful  when  it  flicked 
their  way  ;  but  it  did  them  no  real  harm,  and  posterity  is 
grateful.  It  is  French  in  ease  and  lightness,  though  there  is 
no  precise  parallel  in  French.  It  is  Scotch  in  mental  fibre, 
and  in  its  fundamental  hard  sense.  But  wit,  in  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
ministers  to  many  other  gifts  ;  and,  above  all,  to  her  alarming 
and  riveting  genius  for  feminine  description.  Her  accounts 
of  the  prayer  meeting,  of  the  mesmerist,  of  the  '  money  rows,' 
of  friends  and  visitors,  of  Miss  Jewsbury,  and  Mazzini,  and 
Mrs.  Mill,  are  as  clear  and  sharp  in  their  own  kind  as  anything 
of  Carlyle's  own.  Her  strong  head  had  to  contend  with  a 
large  native  power  of  being  miserable,  which  was  increased  by 
circumstance,  by  what  has  been  called  Carlyle's  '  deficiency  in 
the  small  change  of  affection,'  and  by  something  of  a  morbid 
streak  in  her  nervous  system.  And  the  demon  drove  her  to 
utter  everything,  or  to  write  it  down.  The  household  drama 
was  no  worse  than  thousands  that  never  find  words  at  all. 
The  true,  net  impression  is  one  of  fundamental  honesty,  courage , 
and  spirit  in  both  parties. 

On  Sterling,  Mill,  and  the  Carlyles,  and  their  talk,  a  gentle 
and  clear  light  is  cast  by  Caroline  Fox  in  her  Memories  of  Old 
Friends.  Her  letters  and  journals  range  from  1835  to  1871, 
and  Wordsworth,  Hartley  Coleridge,  Tennyson,  Bunsen, 
Maurice,  and  many  figures  more  move  across  her  vision,  and 
are  told  of  in  her  '  musical  little  voice,'  by  her  '  swift,  neat, 


40  CARLYLE 

pen,'  commended  by  Carlyle.  Caroline  Fox  had  the  curi- 
ously trained  memory  which  can  carry  away  the  pith  of  a 
discourse  at  the  meeting-house,  and  it  helped  her  to  record 
some  of  the  Lectures  on  Heroes,  and  many  a  monologue 
and  conversation.  Sterling's  humming-bird  disquisitions  on 
German  thought  and  poetry  are  noted,  and  Mill's  on  conduct 
and  affairs,  touched  with  his  high  feminine  sentiment  and  his 
late-discovered  love  of  the  poetic  ;  it  is  pleasant  to  find  him 
drawing  out  a  '  calendar  of  odours,'  every  month  its  flower,  for 
his  friend.  There  is  not  a  little  dreary  culture,  rather  solemnly 
taken,  and  now  extinct — pulpit  discourses  and  scientific 
holdings -forth  are  chronicled ;  but  the  nimbleness  of  Caroline 
Fox's  mind  and  her  dainty  intellectual  temper  rise  above 
even  that  atmosphere.  It  was  surely  an  age  of  unmatched 
eagerness  for  talking  on  '  subjects,'  for  listening  and  inflicting  ! 
But  we  get  the  sense  of  an  eager,  mirror-like  intelligence  at 
work,  and  also  of  a  heart  of  gold,  which  the  slightly  formal 
style  cannot  disguise. 


CHAPTER  III 
PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 


The  fifty  years  that  ended  with  the  death  of  Bentham  were 
not,  in  Britain,  a  great  age  of  philosophy1  or  of  philosophical 
writing.  There  was  no  Kant,  Fichte,  Hegel,  or  Schopen- 
hauer. Late  in  the  day  Coleridge,  followed  by  Carlyle,  began 
to  acclimatise  German  thought,  and  to  ask  the  public  to  think 
on  fundamentals  ;  but  neither  of  these  transmitters  and  inter- 
preters of  genius  can  be  called,  from  the  European  point  of 
view,  an  originative  mind,  nor  were  they  methodical  thinkers. 
The  writers  who  merit  the  latter  title,  like  Godwin,  Bentham, 
and  James  Mill,  had  started  by  banishing  metaphysics ;  and  their 
power  and  service  lay  in  the  sphere  of  applied  philosophy,  in 
sociology,  in  legal  reform,  in  political  economy,  and  in  the 
frontier-ground  between  positive  law  and  ethics.  The  elder 
Mill  greatly  advanced  psychology  as  a  natural  science.  In 
political  thinking  the  group  is  in  sharp  contrast  to  Burke  and 
to  all  for  which  he  stands.  They  share  nothing  with  him 
except  his  dislike  of  '  first  philosophy.'  They  descend,  in  the 
first  instance,  from  the  traditional  English  school,  with  its 
emphasis  on  what  is  given  to  the  mind  by  experience,  and  its 
inclination  to  derogate  from  what  may  be  given  either  in  or 
by  the  mind  ;  and  they  draw,  more  immediately,  on  the  ideas 
of  the  French  Revolution,  of  which  a  crude  and  naif  version 
is  found  in  Godwin.  The  principle  of  the  rights  of  man  lives 
on  in  the  individualism  of  the  '  philosophic  radicals,'  but  it 
becomes  obscured  by  the  principle  of  utility,  or  of  the  '  greatest 
happiness.'  The  aim  of  this  school  was,  first  of  all,  to  state  in 
a  rational  way  the  conditions  of  welfare  for  the  individual, 
especially  for  the  unenfranchised  and  ignored  classes  ;  and 
next,  to  proclaim  and  fight  for  the  changes  of  privilege  re- 
quired for  the  attainment  of  those  conditions.  The  campaign 
was  a  great  one,  and  was  partially  successful,  and  had  its  in- 
fluence on  literature.  Its  intellectual  history  was  well  written 
by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen. 

41 


42  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

Bentham  and  James  Mill  could  not  foster  a  great,  or  even 
a  very  good,  philosophical  style,  which  seldom  flourishes 
where  metaphysics  are  considered  a  perilous  luxury.  But  the 
want  was  to  be  made  good  by  their  adversaries  like  Hamilton, 
Mansel,  and  Ferrier,  and  also  by  their  truant  son,  John  Stuart 
Mill,  who  broke  away  from  radical  orthodoxy.  Their  own 
notion  of  life  was  decidedly  bleached  ;  they  remained  cheer- 
fully or  grimly  blank  to  scenery  and  poetry  and  art,  to  imagina- 
tion and  mystery.  They  would  only  reckon  with  what  reason 
gave,  and  ignored  much  that  is  given  to  reason  to  judge,  in- 
cluding the  sub-reasonable  or  unconscious  element  in  man. 
They  are  anti-romantic.  The  key  to  John  Stuart  Mill,  the 
leading  English  thinker  of  the  mid-century,  is  found  in  his 
effort  to  repair  these  deficiencies,  and  in  fact  to  edit  Bentham- 
ism ;  to  fit  the  missing  feelings  and  ideals  into  philosophy, 
while  trying  to  crutch  them  on  reason  and  logic  as  still  under- 
stood. In  his  passionate  effort  to  do  this  Mill  becomes  a  very 
good,  a  very  considerable,  all  but  a  great  writer.  An  unusually 
pure,  high,  and  honest  mind,  with  a  true  strain  of  magnanimity, 
he  always  remains.  Before  approaching  him  it  is  well  to  note 
some  of  the  links  between  philosophy  and  letters  during  this 
period,  without  affecting  to  write  its  intellectual  chronicle. 

In  one  way  the  disappointment  continues.  To  the  last  no 
philosopher  arises  in  England  who  makes  an  epoch  in  general 
thought.  There  is  no  book  to  compare  with  Hegel's  Msthetik 
(published  1832),  or  with  Schopenhauer's  World  as  Will  and 
Idea  (1819).  Neither  of  these  works  was  put  into  English  for 
many  years.  Comte  had  not  so  long  to  wait.  Still  it  was  not 
all  an  evil  that  our  philosophy  for  a  time  kept  its  insular  stamp. 
The  native  genius  could  thus  work  more  freely  and  yield  all 
that  was  in  it. 

Its  character  can  be  seen  best  in  three  books,  which  may 
be  taken  as  landmarks.  The  first  is  Mill's  Logic  (1843),  another 
is  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  (1859),  the  third  is  Herbert 
Spencer's  First  Principles  (1862).  In  the  long  series  of  writings 
thus  inaugurated,  the  Liberty  (1859),  The  Descent  of  Man  (1871), 
and  The  Data  of  Ethics  (1879),  are  further  landmarks.  Much 
of  the  controversial  writing  of  the  age  can  be  referred  directly 
or  otherwise  to  these  six  volumes.  Conspicuous  later  in  the 
war  is  Huxley,  an  athlete  of  noble  temper  and  a  genuine  gift 
of  style,  who  lies  somewhat  buried  under  his  own  trophies. 
On  the  liberal  side,  Mill  and  Huxley  stand  above  the  rest  as 
writers  ;  there  is  the  best  quality  of  the  classical  age  in  the 
style  and  mind  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen.     In  the  other  camp, 


HAMILTON  43 

Mansel  and  Terrier  are  both  masters  of  a  philosophical  diction 
of  rare  excellence.  But  we  must  not,  on  either  side,  confound 
literary  with  philosophical  importance.  These,  in  the  case  of 
Herbert  Spencer,  do  not  coincide.  Darwin,  while  not  a  philo- 
sopher in  the  accepted  sense,  and  not  exactly  of  mark  as  a 
master  of  words,  leavened  universal  thought.  Indeed,  the 
year  1860  may  be  taken  as  a  watershed.  Thereafter  the  con- 
ception of  evolution,  with  its  endless  applications  and  fresh 
vocabulary,  became  really  current.  John  Stuart  Mill  it  never 
fairly  penetrated ;  he  lived  till  1873,  but  his  mind  was  formed 
long  before  Darwin  wrote.  He  was  greatly  moulded  by  his 
early  revulsions,  as  becomes  clear  when  we  glance  at  the  pro- 
minent a  priori  thinkers  before  1860.  The  first  of  these,  the 
most  influential  teacher  in  Britain,  Mill  attacks  along  the 
whole  line  in  his  Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philo- 
sophy (1865),  a  work  in  which  many  of  the  vital  issues  between 
the  philosophical  Right  and  Left  are  arrayed. 


II 

It  was  in  1829  that  Sir  William  Hamilton  (1788-1856)  began 
to  write  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  where  his  distinctive  theories 
of  perception,  of  predication,  and  of  the  '  unconditioned,'  were 
first  presented.  His  lectures  on  logic  and  metaphysic  were 
given  from  his  chair  in  Edinburgh,  beginning  in  1836.  Their 
posthumous  publication  (1858-60)  explains  why  Mill's  attack, 
so  late  in  the  day,  could  still  be  fresh.  Hamilton  had,  however, 
published  his  edition  of  Reid,  with  dissertations  appended, 
and  some  volumes  of  Discussions.  His  lore  was  very  great,  in 
letters  as  well  as  in  philosophy,  and,  though  it  is  more  critical, 
it  reminds  us  of  the  cascade  of  erudition  in  writers  like  Cud- 
worth.  He  might  be  called  a  humanist  with  the  brain  of  a 
schoolman.  He  was  deep  in  theology,  in  Greek,  and  in  Latin 
and  neo-Latin  poetry.  He  planned  to  edit  George  Buchanan. 
Like  a  true  Scottish  professor  he  dearly  loves  a  quotation. 
He  comes  back  with  a  sigh  and  a  '  But  to  return  '  from  his 
roll-call  of  obscure  names  and  curious  parallels.  As  we  turn 
his  pages  we  see  the  Northern  faces  in  the  classroom,  drinking 
in  the  difference  between  the  five  main  theories  of  immediate 
perception,  or  lighting  up  at  the  resonant  hexameters  of 
Fracastorius  on  the  Platonic  Ideas.  Hamilton's  diction  flouts 
the  graces  ;  he  can  use  words  like  redargue,  potence,  astrict,  or 
transeunt,  and  can  say  that  Dr.  Brown  '  evacuates  the  pheno- 
menon of  all  that  desiderates'  explanation.'     It  is  a  pity  that 


44  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

Lockhart,  as  '  Peter,'  patrolled  Edinburgh  too  soon  to  put 
Hamilton  in  his  '  letters  to  his  kinsfolk.'  Yet  there  is  a  certain 
grand  rhetorical  air,  a  glow  and  direct  appeal,  which  the 
Universities  of  the  South  are  ready  to  despise,  but  which  is 
exhilarating  all  the  same  ;  and  this  air  Hamilton  commands. 
With  all  his  pedantry  he  rivets  the  mind.  He  contrives  to 
unite  logical  and  historical  exposition  without  confusing  the 
young,  or  the  reader,  which  is  no  easy  feat.  Mill  regrets  that 
Hamilton  did  not  keep  to  the  history  of  philosophy.  For 
such  a  task  he  was  equipped  by  his  learning  ;  but  he  is  not 
remarkable  for  apprehending  the  point  of  view  of  other  minds, 
and  if  he  had  remained  a  mere  historian  he  might  have  sacrificed 
much  of  his  power.  For  his  chief  desire  is  to  make  others  think  ; 
and  the  sight  of  the  teacher  reasoning  aloud,  refuting  and  con- 
structing, whether  well  or  ill,  prevents  the  dead  hand  of  the 
past,  the  purely  historical  treatment,  from  chilhng  initiative. 
He  certainly  knows  the  right  way  to  usher  in  philosophy.  He 
begins  by  copious  definition  and  discrimination  of  the  central 
terms,  subject,  substance,  reason,  realism,  and  of  their  synonyms 
in  languages  ancient  and  modern.  He  unsealed  British  ears 
to  the  greater  German  thinkers.  It  may  be  true,  as  Mill 
says,  that  much  of  his  precision  is  only  apparent  ;  but  he 
lays  out  the  ground  in  a  large  way,  and  states  the 
perennial  problems  sharply,  with  such  reiteration  and  harking- 
back  as  befits  the  educational  scene.  In  his  dissertations 
and  notes  to  Reid,  where  his  object  is  not  first  of  all  to 
stimulate,  the  method  is  much  the  same,  while  the  rhetoric  is 
absent. 

Hamilton  is  not  judged,  even  by  those  of  his  own  lineage,  to 
have  left  much  that  is  of  original  or  lasting  value  for  thought. 
But  he  raised  up  the  study  of  metaphysic  in  Britain,  opening  up 
anew  the  larger  horizons  of  the  history  of  philosophy,  and  he 
gave  a  point  of  departure  for  two  diametrically  opposite  schools, 
represented  by  Mansel  and  by  Herbert  Spencer.  As  a  philo- 
sopher, he  holds  that  the  infinite  and  the  absolute  are  past  our 
knowing ;  but,  in  the  sphere  of  rational  theology,  he  seems  to 
offer  them  as  objects  of  belief.  Hence  the  divine  and  the 
agnostic  use  his  conclusions  in  opposite  ways.  Hamilton 
quickened  the  study  of  psychology  ;  and  he  has  his  ties  with 
the  romantic  movement,  dwelling  much  on  the  hidden  fund  of 
human  feeling  and  experience,  as  it  emerges  in  dreams,  in  the 
phenomena  of  dual  personality,  and  in  the  sense  of  the  mys- 
terious. He  also  awakens,  as  none  of  his  opponents  do,  a 
livery  sense  of  the  populous  past  of  thought — of  the  human 


MANSEL  45 

wisdom  scattered  amongst  the  philosophers,  and  of  the  philo- 
sophy that  is  to  be  found  in  the  poets. 

Hamilton  is  cumbrous,  with  all  his  abundant  energy.  But 
his  follower,  Henry  Longueville  Mansel *  (1820-71),  professor 
at  Oxford  and  latterly  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  is  the  master  of  a 
pure  and  precise  diction — classical  and  never  too  scholastic — 
of  a  pithiness  and  rigour  in  demonstration,  of  a  grim  order  of 
wit,  and  sometimes  of  a  pure  and  exalted  music.  Even  if  his 
main  thesis  be  thought  an  historical  curiosity,  Mansel  is  plainly 
a  logician  born.  His  Prolegomena  Logica  (1851)  are  designed, 
in  the  first  place,  to  defend  the  innate  and  universal  nature, 
and  to  state  the  exact  function,  of  the  principles  of  formal 
thinking  ;  secondly,  to  establish  the  restriction  of  human  know- 
ledge to  that  which  is  purely  finite  and  '  conditioned  '  ;  and  then 
to  apply,  more  fully  than  Hamilton  had  done,  these  conceptions 
to  the  data  of  theology.  Such  is  the  aim  of  his  Bampton 
Lectures,  delivered  in  1858,  on  The  Limits  of  Religious  Thought 
Examined.  The  long  preface  to  the  fourth  edition  (1859)  forms 
part  of  the  argument,  which  is  to  the  effect  that 

the  history  of  mankind  in  general,  as  well  as  the  consciousness  of 
each  individual,  alike  testify  that  religion  is  not  a  function  of  thought ; 
and  that  the  attempt  to  make  it  so,  if  consistently  carried  out, 
necessarily  leads,  firstly  to  Anthropomorphism,  and  finally  to 
Atheism  (ch.  viii.). 

The  italics,  which  are  not  Mansel's,  contain  the  essence  of  his 
view.  He  argues  that  reason  can  only  go  bankrupt  in  the 
endeavour  to  control  the  region  of  faith,  wherein  the  truths  of 
theology  lie  ;  yet  that  this  is  no  disproof  of  religion  ;  since 
reason,  in  her  own  field,  encounters  difficulties  fully  as  great  as 
those  raised  by  faith — a  new  turn  given  to  the  argument  of 
Butler  ;  and  that,  moreover,  the  orthodox  creed  is  irresistibly 
commended  by  the  moral  consciousness,  the  voice  of  the  heart, 
and  the  teachings  of  history.  Mansel's  pleading  for  his  prin- 
ciples and  their  applications  is  of  signal  ability,  and  it  is  seen 
again  in  his  reviews  and  in  his  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned 
(1866),  a  rejoinder  to  '  Mill  on  Hamilton.'  He  naturally  raised 
a  hornet's  nest.  Some  of  the  orthodox  found  that  he  had 
conceded  altogether  too  much  ;  the  Broad  Church,  in  the 
person  of  Maurice,  entered  the  fray  in  the  name  of  the  free 
reason,  and  there  was  a  painful  exchange  of  amenities  ;  while 
Mill,  taking  up  Mansel's  proposition  that  human  and  divine 
goodness  might  signify  very  different  things,  since  our  moral 
notions  can  only  be  'relative,'  exclaimed  that  if  Mansel's  God 


46  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

couM  send  him  to  hell  for  denying  such  a  discrepancy,  to  hell 
he  would  go.  A  later  philosopher,  Hoffding,  echoes  the  feeling 
concerning  Mansel's  general  view,  that  '  this  weapon  is  only 
too  apt  to  wound  those  that  use  it.'  But  it  is  admirably  forged 
and  chased,  and  will  not  soon  cease  to  be  regarded  for  its 
handiwork.  In  his  directly  religious  appeals,  Mansel  is  able 
to  rise  to  a  grave  but  piercing  eloquence,  of  the  real,  the  best, 
the  indefinable  Oxford  sort.  Few  there  are,  however  rigorous- 
minded,  in  whom  the  old  city  leaves  no  touch  of  mysticism. 
His  irony  and  sarcasm  are  also  Oxonian  ;  and  the  best  example 
of  these  qualities,  in  prose,  is  the  article  on  Sensation  Novels, 
wherein  twenty -four  such  productions,  which  are  mostly  trash, 
but  which  also  include  Lady  Audley's  Secret  and  No  Name, 
are  faithfully  and  sourly  dealt  with.  His  Aristophanic  skit, 
Phrontisterion,  was  prompted  by  the  report  of  the  University 
Commission  of  1850.  The  allusions  to  Lord  John  Russell  and 
the  '  Manchester  man  '  were  soon  mouldy,  but  the  chorus  of 
Hegelian  and  Straussian  professors,  who  were  to  supplant 
the  college  tutors,  still  dances  to  most  excellent  anapsests. 
Mansel  spoke  for  Oxford  conservatism  in  the  most  formidable 
sense  of  the  term.  Some,  however,  of  the  reforms  of  1850 
remain,  and  so  do  the  tutors,  and  so  does  his  copy  of  good 
verses. 

A  professor  of  genius  must  now  be  mentioned  ;  Scotch,  of 
course  ;  an  acute -minded  and  glorious  dogmatist,  who  called 
his  system  '  Scottish  to  the  core.'  This  is  James  Frederick 
Ferrier  1  (1808-64),  who  lectured  at  St.  Andrews  for  twenty 
years  ;  the  author  of  Institutes  of  Metaphysic  (1854),  of  a  course 
on  early  Greek  philosophy,  and  of  a  number  of  shorter  articles . 
All  thinkers  except  possibly  Plato  and  Berkeley  had  asked  the 
wrong  questions,  or  in  the  wrong  order,  or  had  answered  them 
wrong,  or  had  only  a  glimmering  of  the  answers.  To  set 
matters  right,  Ferrier  would  establish  an  idealism  of  a  new 
kind  and  by  a  new  method.  The  pupil  and  friend  of  Hamilton, 
and  with  him  the  champion  of  metaphysic  against  the  still 
potent  school  of  '  common  sense,'  he  breaks  away  and  pursues 
an  independent  path.  He  is  no  mere  expounder  of  Hegel,  or 
of  any  one  else.  The  path  is  in  three  stages  ;  a  theory  of 
knowledge,  a  theory  of  ignorance  (on  which  Ferrier  lays 
especial  stress),  and  a  theory  of  being.  Everything  follows 
rigorously  from  the  primary  and  self-evident  proposition  that 
'  along  with  what  every  intelligence  knows,  it  must,  as  the 
ground  and  condition  of  its  knowledge,  have  some  cognisance 
of  itself.'     The  form  of  proof  is  like  Spinoza's  :    a  string  of 


FERRIER  47 

geometrically  stated  theorems,  with  demonstrations  and 
glosses  appended  ;  and  everything  leads  up  to  a  final  definition 
of  '  Absolute  Existence.'  For  clearness,  Ferrier  adds  a  string 
of  consistent  '  counter-propositions,'  which  form  a  complete 
corpus  of  philosophic  falsehood.  In  a  letter  to  De  Quincey 
he  tries  to  put  the  whole  system  in  a  nutshell ;  but  it  is  best 
apprehended  from  his  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Con- 
sciousness (1838-9)  and  his  Berkeley  and  Idealism  (1842),  where 
he  is  not  fettered  by  scholastic  method. 

No  British  metaphysician  writes  with  more  relish  and  con- 
fidence, or  more  as  one  to  the  manner  born.  The  magisterial 
style  carries  us  along.  Mill,  who  thought  that  Ferrier  begged 
every  one  of  his  propositions  as  it  came,  called  the  Institutes 
'  the  romance  of  logic,'  very  justly.  It  is  good  to  read  Ferrier 
every  few  years,  as  a  tonic  ;  not  only  for  his  peculiar  rigour  in 
the  statement  of  the  most  abstract  matter,  and  for  the  jaunty 
ease  with  which  he  moves  in  the  metaphysical  Zion,  but  also 
for  his  rhetoric,  which  often  amounts  to  eloquence.  He  beats 
his  way  to  the  Absolute  upon  a  drum.  He  sets  up  his  foe,  the 
'  materialist,'  like  a  stuffed  image,  and  then  hurls  him  to  the 
abyss,  not  indeed  of  falsehood,  which  is  too  good  for  such  a 
being,  but  of  nonsense,  of  the  '  contradictory,'  of  total  and 
stark  and  irredeemable  inconceivability — of  what  is  incon- 
ceivable, be  it  noted  as  vital,  not  only  to  us,  but  '  in  itself  ' 
and  'to  any  possible  intellect.'  This  is  all  most  exhilarating  ; 
there  is  no  finer  canter  for  the  mind.  The  sallies  and  perora- 
tions, the  passages  on  the  apparent  unfruitfulness  of  philo- 
sophy, and  on  Plato  ('  over  deep  and  over  shallow  he  rolls  on, 
broad,  urbane,  and  unconcerned '),  are  not  inferior.  The 
college  lectures  on  Parmenides,  Heraclitus,  and  their. company, 
are  models  of  the  art.  Furrier  presents  highly  rarefied  ideas 
as  firmly  and  vividly  as  Macaulay  presents  detail.  He  is  a 
most  brilliant  blossom  of  the  a  priori  stock,  and  he  initiates 
the  return,  of  which  note  will  be  made  in  the  next  chapter, 
towards  an  absolute  idealism.  His  school  never  died  down  ; 
but  it  was  eclipsed  for  some  decades  in  the  public  eye  by  that 
of  '  experience,'  which  enlisted  for  a  time  the  best  or  most 
popular  writers,  and  whose  appeal  was  strengthened  tenfold 
by  the  prodigious  development  of  science,  its  natural  ally,  and 
of  the  accompanying  concept  of  evolution,  which  altered  so 
many  '  values.' 


48  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

III 

Is  there  any  one  alive  who  still  speaks  of  '  Mr.  Mill,'  x  as 
people  did  for  some  time  after  his  death  in  1873  ?  A  certain 
special  dignity  hung  round  his  name  ;  and  his  letters,  the  mass 
of  which  only  appeared  a  few  years  ago,  do  not  impair  the  im- 
pression. They  fill  in,  but  do  not  essentially  alter,  the  portrait . 
They  are,  it  is  true,  largely  discourses  ;  they  are  like  the 
reports  of  a  grave  public  servant  to  a  trusted  colleague  ;  or 
they  are  guarded,  finished  replies  to  earnest  questioners. 
Mill's  intellectual  passion,  which  is  everywhere  latent,  comes 
nearest  to  the  surface  in  his  early  outpourings  to  Sterling  and 
Carlyle  ;  and  also  in  his  subsequent  correspondence  with 
Comte,  which  has  been  long  before  the  world.  He  was  the 
most  conscientiously  receptive  of  philosophers  ;  anxiously 
he  drew  on  other  minds,  and  balanced  his  accounts  with  them, 
yet  always  in  an  independent  spirit  ;  he  made  a  religion  of  the 
'  conduct  of  the  understanding.'  He  hardly  saw  why  others 
should  not  return  the  compliment  ;  and  we  can  watch  him 
impinging  vainly  and  seriously,  with  the  best  of  arguments, 
upon  the  fixed  conclusions  of  Comte,  Spencer,  or  Carlyle. 
This  openness  is  his  strength  ;  but  it  leads  him  less  to  a  rigid 
foursquare  system  of  thought  than  to  a  living  and  changing 
body  of  principles.  I  can  only  glance  at  some  of  the  mental 
traits  and  vicissitudes  which  are  mirrored  by  his  admirable 
style,  without  trying  even  to  summarise  his  philosophy.  His 
life  (1806-73)  falls  into  several  chapters  which  may  be  separated 
by  the  years  1826,  1843,  and  1858. 

The  first  may  be  taken  to  end  with  his  twentieth  year  (1826), 
when  the  too  famous  paternal  drill  which  he  has  described,  and 
on  the  whole  defended,  in  his  Autobiography,  led  to  a  mental 
crisis.  His  gifts  were  precocious  ;  he  was  brought  up  on 
Benthamism  ;  he  painfully  shed  a  good  deal  of  it  ;  and  part  of 
his  work  in  life  was  to  amend,  to  enlarge,  and,  as  I  have  said, 
to  edit  Benthamism  ;  and  at  last  he  edited  it  almost  out  of 
knowledge.  This  task  proceeds  during  the  second  phase,  which 
ended  with  the  issue  of  the  System  of  Logic  in  1843.  During 
those  seventeen  years  Mill,  whose  profession  was  that  of  an 
official  in  the  India  House,  was  chiefly  a  journalist  and  reviewer. 
He  had  started  in  the  newly  founded  Westminster  (1824),  and 
was  soon  a  leading  contributor  ;  from  1835  onwards,  for  some 
years,  he  superintended  the  London  (afterwards  the  London 
and  Westminster)  Review  ;  and  he  wrote  in  other  journals. 
Many  of  his  papers  reappear  in  the  four  volumes  of  Disser- 


MILL'S  CAREER  AND  UPBRINGING  49 

tations  and  Discussions  (1859-75),  and  he  went  on  reviewing 
long  after  the  end  of  this  period,  which  shows  his  mind  in  the 
making,  and  produced  some  of  his  weightiest  work.  The 
Logic  was  his  first  real  book  ;  but  his  name  and  influence  were 
much  increased  by  the  Principles  of  Political  Economy  (1848). 
These  two  are  Mill's  only  monumental  books .  The  third  chapter 
lasts  for  ten  years,  until  1858,  when  he  retired  from  the  India 
House,  and  when  he  also  lost  his  wife,  formerly  Mrs.  Taylor, 
whom  he  had  married,  after  a  long  friendship,  in  1851.  This 
bereavement  is  the  second  turning-point  in  Mill's  career.  A 
fourth  period  produced  a  series  of  political  and  social  writings, 
including  the  Liberty  (1859),  his  most  popular  book,  and  his 
best  composed  and  best  written .  It  was  preceded  by  Thoughts 
on  Parliamentary  Reform,  and  followed  by  Considerations  on 
Representative  Government  (1861).  In  a  fifth  and  final  stage, 
Mill  is  seen  inclining  more  to  pure  philosophy  ;  and  the  fruits 
are  seen  in  Utilitarianism,  which  had  been  sketched  in  1854 ;  in 
the  Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy  (1865)  ; 
in  Auguste  Comte  and  Positivism  (1865)  ;  in  the  notes  to  his 
edition  (1869)  to  his  father's  Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind  ;  in 
The  Subjection  of  Women  (1869)  ;  and  in  the  Three  Essays  on 
Religion,  which  came  out  after  his  death.  Mill  sat  for  a  few 
years  as  independent  member  for  Westminster,  and  his  speeches, 
which  were  much  respected,  may  count  amongst  his  many 
essays  and  articles  on  current  politics. 

IV 

Mill's  premature  surfeit  of  history,  chronology,  logic,  and  the 
solid  sciences  has  often  been  deplored  ;  but  it  trained  him  as 
nothing  else  could  have  done  for  the  work  of  his  life,  and  he 
paid,  like  every  one,  the  price  for  his  training.  He  got  a  durably 
wrong  notion,  as  his  inspiring  inaugural  address  (1867)  at 
St.  Andrews  shows,  of  the  amount  of  diet  that  the  youthful 
mind  can  assimilate.  But  the  worst  of  it  was  that  he  was  not 
allowed  to  grow  ;  he  was  told  to  watch  and  set  down  and  justify 
everything  that  occurred  in  his  brain.  His  introspective  habit 
thus  begins  early  ;  and  the  instincts  and  feelings,  when  they 
come,  come  in  defiance  of  the  regime,  and  therefore  they  have 
to  be  cultivated.  Mill  goes  to  landscape,  to  music,  and  to  the 
poets,  as  men  travel  for  a  '  cure  '  ;  and  he  has  to  be  his  own 
physician,  making  clinical  notes  of  his  case.  His  constant, 
serious,  depressed  attention  to  his  own  nature  was  an  unhappy 
thing  ;  it  left  him,  he  says,  aware  of  '  self  -consciousness  even  in 
VOL.  i.  D 


50  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

the  act  of  confiding  '  ;  and  it  is  wonderful  that  he  remained 
signally  unselfish,  after  so  long  a  bout  of  the  spiritual  dryness, 
or  accidia,  which  easily  produces  an  incurable  egoist.  But  he 
had  healthy  impulses  ;  he  had  a  boy's  liking  for  fiction  and 
fantasy,  and  also,  what  is  rarer  in  boys,  for  scenery.  He  was 
sociable,  and  was  delighted  when  he  got  away  to  France. 
Indeed,  he  seldom  uses  the  word  '  English  '  without  some 
aversion  ;  this  is  a  trace  of  the  very  considerable  dourness  of 
his  upbringing.  He  applied  to  the  poets,  and  found  that  Byron 
was  less  stimulating  than  he  was  advertised  to  be  ;  but  he  got 
from  Wordsworth  satisfaction  in  things  that  do  not  depend 
upon  the  march  of  intellect.  His  pleasures  were  thus  increased, 
but  he  never  expected  too  much  from  them.  Poor  man,  ever 
arguing  that  happiness  is  the  chief  good,  and  getting  so  much 
less  than  his  share  of  the  commodity !  He  has  the  thorn  in 
the  spirit.  Still,  we  find  him  liking  his  garden,  and  latterly 
contriving  a  humane  sort  of  existence  down  at  Avignon. 

In  the  end  there  are  two  '  ruling  passions,'  which  seem  to 
'  swallow  up  the  rest,'  and  can  hardly  be  distinguished.  One 
is  for  his  wife  J  and  for  her  memory  ;  the  other  is  for  humanity 
at  large,  and  more  especially  for  its  oppressed  portions.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  the  woman  of  whom  Mill  wrote  in  print  with 
such  disconcerting  extravagance  not  only  furthered  his  work, 
but  cleared  and  kept  alight  his  enthusiasm  for  mankind.  She 
must  have  been  somewhat  uncommon,  though  we  have  little 
but  Mills  word  for  it  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  so  pure  and 
pent  a  nature  as  his,  unused  to  the  easy  commerce  of  youth, 
might  idealise  such  a  person.  The  reader  may  be  left  to  guess 
who  it  was  that  pronounced  her  to  be  '  far  otherwise  than  a 
paragon,  one  might  safely  say,'  the  speaker's  wife  adding  that 
she  '  was  not  the  pink  of  womankind,  as  her  husband  conceived, 
but  a  peculiarly  affected  and  empty  body.'  We  have  nothing 
that  she  wrote  except  one  article  which  Mill  edited.  It  is  on 
the  same  topic  as  his  Subjection  of  Women,  which,  as  he  tells 
us,  bears  the  stamp  of  her  inspiration,  and  which  contains  his 
most  fervent  writing.  Dr.  Georg  Brandes,2  whom  Mill  visited 
in  Paris  in  1870,  has  said  no  more  than  the  truth  : 

He  talked  first  of  his  wife,  whose  grave  in  Avignon  he  had  just 
quitted.  ...  It  may  be  thought  that  the  man  who  expressed  him- 
self in  this  style  was  anything  but  a  great  portrait-painter,  and  the 
actual  correctness  of  his  judgement  may  be  questioned ;  but  he 
cannot  be  reproached  with  considering  marriage  a  mere  contract,  as 
sometimes  has  been  done  owing  to  the  extremely  rational  stand- 
point that  he  took  up  on  the  question  of  women.     Great  poets  like 


MILL  AND  CARLYLE  51 

Dante  and  Petrarch  have  set  up  an  imaginative  memorial  to  the 
women  they  had  loved  in  imaginative  wise  ;  but  I  know  not  that 
any  poet  has  given  such  a  warm  and  sincere  testimony  to  a  loving 
admiration  for  a  feminine  being  as  Mill  has  left  to  the  merit  of  his 
wife  and  to  her  enduring  significance  for  him. 

But  the  true  liberator  of  Mill's  intellect  had  been  Carlyle,1 
with  whom  he  made  acquaintance  in  1831,  when  Benthamism 
was  already  dust  upon  his  lips.  A  correspondence  followed, 
and  many  of  Mill's  letters  to  Carlyle  are  published.  For  a 
moment  he  even  catches  the  celebrated,  the  highly  catching 
manner  ;  sets  down  his  spiritual  debt  to  Carlyle  ;  and  helps 
to  launch  The  French  Revolution  with  intelligent  praise.  He 
feels  it  his  business,  at  this  period,  to  '  translate  the  mysticism 
of  others  into  the  language  of  argument '  ;  that  all  truth  can 
be  thus  translated  he  entertains  no  doubt.  He  himself  is  a 
'  logician-in-ordinary  '  and  no  more,  and  Carlyle  sees  truths 
that  lie  beyond  his  reach.  Mill  never  completed  the  work  of 
'  translation,'  for  the  rift  between  the  ethical  and  social  faith 
of  the  two  men  became  apparent.  For  one  thing,  Mill  trusted 
more  and  more  in  the  mechanism  for  representing  the  popular 
judgement ;  this  was  to  be  perfected  by  the  '  proportional ' 
system  and  similar  devices,  which  for  Carlyle  could  only 
measure  the  more  precisely  the  folly  of  mankind  ;  not  to  name 
womankind,  whom  Mill  includes  in  his  ideal  electorate .  The  real 
issue  was  whether  the  collective  sense  of  the  units,  if  faithfully 
registered,  could  be  trusted — better,  at  least,  than  anything  else 
— to  steer  aright,  and  on  this  point  there  could  be  no  agreement. 

Carlyle,  whether  right  or  wrong,  was  here  consistent.  But 
Mill  was  entangled  in  the  contradiction  which  wrecked  the 
philosophical  radicals  in  practice.  He  had  himself  little  faith 
in  Demos  ;  he  was  too  much  of  a  bureaucrat,  and  too  fastidious 
in  grain,  to  have  it.  He  always  speaks  shrewdly  of  business 
matters,  as  a  highly  capable  functionary ;  but  his  calling 
deepened  his  distrust  of  the  unskilled  vulgar  mind.  New 
Demos  might  become  merely  old  Caesar  writ  large.  The 
tyranny  of  the  majority,  repressing  '  individuality  as  a  means  of 
well-being,'  became  Mill's  dread.  His  only  hope  lay  in  the 
better  education  of  Demos.  This  remedy  Carlyle  preached 
also,  but  with  next  to  no  hope  ;  and,  since  no  Caesar  was  forth- 
coming, relapsed  into  tirade.  Moreover,  what  was  yet  more 
fundamental,  Carlyle  and  Mill  had  different  ideas  of  justice, 
as  their  respective  action  in  the  case  of  Governor  Eyre  demon- 
strates ;  and  a  real  divergence  on  such  a  point  wrecks  any 
friendship  worthy  of  the  name. 


52  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 


Mill,  meanwhile,  turned  to  many  other  sources  of  wisdom  in 
his  quest  for  a  larger  faith.     He  read  history,  of  which  his  own 
school  had  long  conceived  in  a  narrow  way.     He  was  the  son 
of  the  historian  of  British  India  ;  but  he  wanted  a  more  sym- 
pathetic reading  of  mankind  and  the  past ;  a  creed  that  should 
indicate  the  progress,  however  slow  and  broken,  of  the  human 
spirit.     His  papers   on    Guizot   and   Michelet,  and  those   on 
Grote,  show  his  lines  of  study.     But  he  cared  less  for  the 
pageant  or  chronicle  of  history  than  for  its  philosophy.     He 
was  drawn  to  the  Saint -Simonians,1  who  revealed  to  him  the 
'  organic  stages  '  in  the  growth  of  society,  and  who  fortified 
his  belief  in  the  claims  of  labour  and  of  women.     But  that 
school  dispersed  in  a  sorry  fashion,  and  the  letters  of  John 
Stuart  Mill  become  almost  flippant  in  describing  their  rout. 
But  he  was  thus  led  on  to  Comte,2  who  left  a  deeper  imprint. 
The  tale  of  Mill's  connexions  with  Comtism  and  its  founder 
is  too  long  to  tell  here.     The  correspondence  lasts  some  five 
years  (1841-6),  begins  in  enthusiasm,  and  ends  chilled.     Mill's 
mature  view  is  seen  at  length  in  Auguste  Comte  and  Positivism, 
published  long  afterwards.     He  there  mocks  with  horror  at 
the  politique  positive,  with  its  philosophic  despotism,  termed 
by  Huxley  '  Catholicism  minus  Christianity  '  ;    but  from  the 
earlier  philosophie  positive  he  drew  not  only  more  than  one 
fruitful  idea,  but  something  like  a  religion  ;  and  a  passage  from 
a  letter  written  in  1854  gives  his  reading  of  the  faith  which 
affected  some  of  the  strongest  minds  in  England  at  that  time  : 

Je  soutiens  comme  lui  [Comte]  que  l'idee  de  l'ensemble  de 
I'humanite,  representee  surtout  par  les  esprits  et  les  caracteres 
d'elite,  passes,  presents,  et  a  venir,  peut  devenir,  non  seulement 
pour  des  personnes  exceptionelles  mais  pour  tout  le  monde,  l'objet 
d'un  sentiment  capable  de  remplacer  avec  avantage  toutes  les 
religions  actuelles,  soit  pour  les  besoins  du  coeur,  soit  pour  ceux  de 
a  vie  sociale.  .  .  .  Restent  sa  morale  et  sa  politique,  et  la-dessus 
je  dois  avouer  mon  dissentiment  presque  total. 

And  again  : 

When  we  see  and  feel  that  human  beings  can  take  the  deepest 
interest  in  what  will  befall  their  country  or  mankind  long  after 
they  are  dead,  and  in  what  they  can  themselves  do  while  they  are 
alive  to  influence  that  distant  prospect  which  they  are  never  destined 
to  behold,  we  cannot  doubt  that  if  this  and  similar  feelings  were 
cultivated  in  the  same  manner  and  degree  as  religion  they  would 
become  a  religion.     (Letters,  ii.  379  (1854).) 


MILL'S  RELIGION  53 

Such  a  creed  softens,  though  it  does  not  exactly  belie,  Mill's 
original  tenet  that  the  duty  of  man  is  to  glorify  Reason  and 
enjoy  her  for  ever.  Apart  from  its  special  doctrines,  such  as 
that  of  the  'three  stages,'  positivism  gave  Mill's  reason  fresh 
material  to  work  upon,  urging  him  to  interpret  the  growth  of 
the  world  instead  of  eternally  arguing  in  the  dialectical  void. 

But  he  could  not  always  be  content  even  with  the  '  service  of 
man,'  founded  on  an  agnostic  basis.  He  had  been  reared,  in  a 
fashion  then  of  the  rarest,  wholly  without  positive  beliefs, 
nor  did  he  ever  acquire  them.  For  some  months  in  the  year 
1854  he  tried  the  experiment  of  putting  down  one  valuable 
thought  each  day  ;  and  these  pensees,  which  were  first  printed 
with  his  letters,  contain  some  of  his  most  striking  sayings  ;  here 
his  mind  is  free,  and  he  is  not  bound  to  reconcile  his  moods. 
He  utters  his  satisfaction  in  the  belief  that 

The  belief  in  a  life  after  death,  without  any  probable  surmise  as  to 
what  it  is  to  be,  would  be  no  consolation,  but  the  very  king  of 
terrors  ...  all  appearances  and  probabilities  are  in  favour  of  the 
cessation  of  our  consciousness  when  our  earthly  mechanism  ceases 
to  work. 

And  again,  thinking  of  his  wife,  he  cries  out  that 

if  human  life  is  governed  by  superior  beings,  how  greatly  must  the 
power  of  the  evil  intelligences  surpass  that  of  the  good, 

— when  such  a  creature  must  perish  ;  and  he  adds,  in  a  way 
that  recalls  Newman's  picture  of  human  life  in  the  Apologia, 

If,  indeed,  it  were  but  a  removal,  not- an  annihilation — but  where 
is  the  proof,  and  where  the  ground  of  hope,  when  we  can  only  judge 
of  the  probability  of  another  state  of  existence,  or  of  the  mode  in 
which  it  is  governed  if  it  exist,  by  the  analogy  of  the  only  work  of 
the  same  powers  which  we  have^any  knowledge  of,  namely,  this 
world  of  unfinished  beginnings,  unrealised  promises,  and  disap- 
pointed endeavours — a  world  the  only  rule  and  object  of  which 
seems  to  be  the  production  of  a  perpetual  succession  of  fruits, 
hardly  any  of  them  destined  to  ripen,  and,  if  they  do,  only  lasting 
a  day. 

Mill  does  not  draw  Newman's  theistic  inference  ;  but  the 
passage  shows  the  fine  of  thought  which  is  familiar  in  the  Three 
Essays,  the  work  of  his  later  years.     In  1860  he  wrote  : 

It  may  be  that  the  world  is  a  battle-field  between  a  good  and  a 
bad  power  or  powers,  and  that  mankind  may  be  capable,  by  suffici- 
ently strenuous  co-operation  with  the  good  power,  of  deciding  or 
at  least  accelerating  its  final  victory.     (Letters,  i.  240.) 


54  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

The  consequence,  suggested  in  the  essay  on  Theism,  comes  out 
in  another  letter  : 

The  cultivation  of  the  idea  of  a  perfectly  good  and  wise  being, 
and  of  the  desire  to  help  the  purposes  of  such  a  being,  is  morally 
beneficial  in  the  highest  degree,  though  the  belief  that  this  being  is 
omnipotent,  and  therefore  the  creator  of  physical,  and  moral  evil, 
is  as  demoralising  a  belief  as  can  be  entertained.     {Letters,  ii.  308.) 

Mill's  Mamcheism  thus  consists  in  dallying  with  the  pious  con- 
jecture of  a  deity  who  is  limited  in  strength  but  of  unexception- 
able intentions  and  is  doomed  to  wrestle  with  a  power  foreign 
to  himself.  Whatever  the  value  of  such  an  idea,  nothing  better 
shows  the  need  of  Mill  to  stay  his  imagination,  which  had  been 
starved  in  early  days,  upon  something  or  other.  It  is  these 
needs,  guesses,  and  Teachings  forth,  and  refusals  to  close  his 
mind,  that  make  him  so  attractive  and  genuine  a  writer. 

VI 

His  earlier  reviews 1  are  unexpectedly  lively,  and  we  must  go 
to  them  if  we  want  rhetoric  from  him.  Some  of  the  sallies  in 
the  manner  of  Thomas  Paine  he  cast  out  in  the  reprinting  ; 
as  in  the  paper  on  Corporation  and  Church  Property  : 

Much  property  is  set  apart  by  the  laws  of  all  idolatrous  nations, 
for  the  special  use  and  service  of  their  gods.  Large  revenues  are 
annually  expended  in  offerings  to  those  gods.  To  resume  those 
revenues  would  manifestly  be  robbing  Baal  ;  they  are  his  by  law  ; 
law  cannot  give  a  clearer  right  of  property  than  he  has  to  them. 
A  lawyer,  addressing  a  court  of  justice,  would  have  nothing  to 
object  to  this  argument  :  but  a  moralist  or  a  legislator  might  say 
that  the  revenues  were  of  no  use  to  Baal,  and  that  he  would  never 
miss  them. 

Quotations  in  his  later  work  become  rare,  but  here  he  is  ready 
to  cite  Figaro  or  Hudibras.  Nor  is  his  range  a  narrow  one. 
The  articles  on  poetry  and  on  Tennyson  show  connoisseurship, 
and  have  the  real  note  of  pleasure.  Mill  is  one  of  the  first  to  see 
(in  1835)  that  Tennyson 

has  the  power  of  creating  scenery,  in  keeping  with  some  state  of 
human  feeling,  so  fitted  to  it  as  to  be  the  embodied  symbol  of  it ; 

and  he  add?  that  Wordsworth  '  seems  to  be  poetical  because  he 
wills  to  be  so,  not  because  he  cannot  help  it.'  He  says  that 
'  all  poetry  is  of  the  nature  of  soliloquy,'  which  is  true  of  the 
kinds  he  liked.  In  1838  he  writes  with  judgement  on  Alfred 
de  Vigny,  then  hardly  known  in  England. 


MILL'S  REVIEWS  55 

There  are  two  classic  articles,  on  Coleridge  (1840)  and 
Bentham.  Coleridge  he  tries  to  understand  from  within,  whilst 
remaining  outside  his  fold  ;  but  less  as  a  critic  or  poet  than  as 
the  voice  of  that  higher  conservatism,  to  which  the  article 
is  Mill's  salute.  The  portrait  of  Bentham  (1838),  one  of  the 
'  great  intellectual  benefactors  of  humanity,'  is  in  his  best 
style,  which  comes  too  seldom  ;  it  is  easy  to  read  in  it  his  own 
contrary  experience,  if  not  a  touch  of  envy  : 

He  had  neither  internal  experience  nor  external ;  the  quiet,  even 
tenor  of  his  life,  and  his  healthiness  of  mind,  conspired  to  exclude 
him  from  both.  He  never  knew  prosperity  and  adversity,  passion 
nor  satiety  ;  he  never  had  even  the  experiences  which  sickness 
gives  ;  he  lived  from  childhood  to  the  age  of  eighty-five  in  boyish 
health.  He  knew  no  dejection,  no  heaviness  of  heart.  He  never 
felt  life  a  sore  and  a  weary  burthen.  He  was  a  boy  to  the  last. 
Self-consciousness,  that  daemon  of  the  men  of  genius  of  our  time, 
from  Wordsworth  to  Byron,  from  Goethe  to  Chateaubriand,  and  to 
which  this  age  owes  so  much  both  of  its  cheerful  and  its  mournful 
wisdom,  never  was  awakened  in  him.  How  much  of  human  nature 
slumbered  in  him  he  knew  not,  neither  can  we  know. 

The  cool  and  detached  survey  of  Benthamism  was  a  blow  to 
true  believers  like  Grote  and  Molesworth.  Other  massive 
essays,  of  various  date,  are  those  on  Guizot  and  on  Civilization. 
The  review  of  The  French  Revolution  has  been  mentioned, 
and  elsewhere  Mill  says  that  Carlyle  has  perfected  the 
second-best  way  of  writing  history,  which  is  to  recreate  the 
life  of  the  past.  The  best  way,  of  course,  is  the  philosophical, 
and  of  this  Mill  finds  a  pattern  in  Grote's  Greece.  His  own 
picture  of  a  free  reasonable  life  can  be  seen  from  his  remarks 
on  Athens,  and  from  his  references  in  the  Liberty  to  Pericles. 
Bain  says  that  Mill  Was,  '  quite  as  much  as  Grote,  a  Greece- 
intoxicated  man.'  Grote's  account  of  the  myths,  which  is  now 
out  of  date,  and  his  analysis,  which  is  by  no  means  so,  of 
the  myth -making  spirit,  especially  attracted  Mill.  Bayle  had 
whetted  his  irony  on  the  gods  and  heroes,  both  sacred  and 
profane.  He  tried  to  show  up  fable  ;  Grote  tries  to  explain  the 
birth  of  fable  and  its  significance.  Mill's  sympathy  with  such 
an  adventure  marks  him  off  from  the  older  rationalism.  But 
history  was  not  his  field,  and  his  chief  writings  must  now  be 
glanced  at. 

vn 

Mill,  we  must  not  forget,  was  a  reformer  in  grain,"  and  his 
gaze  is  fixed  on  the  far-off  living  consequences  latent  in  the 


56  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

most  abstract  doctrine.     He  was  not,  indeed,  bribed  by  the 
fear  or  hope  of  these  consequences,  and  he  makes  it  his  religion 
to  be  judicial,  succeeding,  perhaps,  in  that  intention  so  far  as 
mortal  may.     But  his  real  aim  is  to  find  a  scientific  foundation 
in  the  laws  of  human  nature  for  economic,  social,  and  political 
theory.     This  explains  his  earnestness  and  tension,  and  the 
touch  of  tartness  with  which  he  declines  to  see  the  '  predicate 
quantified,'  or  insists  on  the  three  different  senses  of  the  term 
'  inconceivable.'     The  ordinary  man  does  not  understand  such 
emotion  ;   but  Mill  feels  that  an  error  at  the  outset  may  in  the 
long  run  vitiate  practice.     Much  of  the  Logic  and  of  the  work 
on  Hamilton  is  to  be  read  in  this  fight.    The  most  important 
and  contested  chapters  are  those  on  the  theory  of  causation,1 
which  forms  the  bridge  between  pure  and  applied  philosophy. 
Upon  it  rests  the  whole  inquiry  as  to  the  organon  of  reasoned 
truth,  the  methods  of  proof  and  disproof,  and  the  inquiry  how 
we  are  to  come  right,  and  to  know  when  we  are  right.     The 
problem  of  causation,  again,  leads  straight  back  to  ultimate 
questions  concerning  the   nature   of   the  connexion   between 
mind   and  things,  and  the  make  of  the  mind   itself.      Mill 
is   torn   between    his    own   bent   for   metaphysics,  where  he 
perceives  more   and  more  that  the  true  issue  lies,  and  his 
positivist  desire  to  have  as  little  of  them  as  possible.     He  also 
has  to  justify  the  leap  from  a  purely  subjective  and  sensational 
starting-point  to  a  fixed  external  order.     The  Examination  of 
Hamilton  shows  more  fully  the  detail  and  development  of  the 
campaign,  and  represents  a  later  stage  in  his  mind  ;    but  the 
Logic  is  more  of  a  book,  and  is  his  nearest  approach  to  a  great 
book,  and  has  its  place  in  every  chronicle  of  philosophy  or  of 
literature.     It  was  the  arsenal,  for  a  whole  generation,  of  the 
empirical  school  in  England,  and  not  least  at  Oxford.     There 
it  also  gave  provocation  ;   and  memory  can  still  hear  the  far- 
off,  irritated,  high  accents,  sometimes  Scottish,  of  tutors  bom- 
barding '  Mr.  Mill,'  who  was  fain  to  sweep  away  every  a  priori 
element  in  the  mind,  and  who  showed  the  very  worst  that 
could  be  done  in  that  direction.     The  crown  of  his  edifice  was 
to  be  the  establishment  of  fixed  laws,  or  uniformities,  in  human 
proceedings.     Mill  dreamed  of  a  science  of  human  character, 
'  ethology.'     This  came  to  little  ;    but  the  merit  of  the  Logic 
is  not  to  be  measured  by  asking  how  much  is  now  left  of  it. 
It  offered  (drawing  something  from  Whewell's  History  of  the 
Inductive  Sciences,  1837)  its  elaborate  far-reaching  theory  of 
the  inductive  process.2     Somewhere  Mill  pours  scorn  on  the 
saying  that  the  chief  good  of  such  inquiries  lies  in  the  seeking, 


MILL  ON  LIBERTY  57 

not  in  the  results.  The  lay  reader,  who  cares  little  about  the 
method  of  concomitant  variations,  still  catches  the  spirit  of  the 
quest,  the  spirit  of  the  man  behind  the  book.  Gladstone 
called  him,  inaptly,  '  the  saint  of  rationalism.'  This  he  is  not  ; 
but  he  is  an  unresting,  rather  irritable  seeker  for  the  exact 
truth  ;  the  adversary  of  the  '  idols  of  the  cave,' — the  vicious 
mental  twist  in  each  one  of  us  ;  and  of  the  '  idols  of  the  theatre,' 
or  the  equally  vicious  preconceptions  of  the  schools.  Mill 
shows  this  temper  above  all  when  he  crosses  the  border  into 
social  and  political  philosophy. 


vin 

In  the  Liberty  Mill  comes  nearest  to  classic  form.  Brief, 
transparent,  and  studiously  proportioned,  and  nobly  animated, 
the  tractate  carried  far,  reaching  even  the  East.  It  was  a 
stroke  in  the  general  war  of  liberation,  and  one  which  helped 
to  clear  the  battle-ground,  not  only  at  home,  for  the  already 
surging  conflict  of  ideas.  The  motto  is  taken  from  Von 
Humboldt  :  '  the  absolute  and  essentia?,  importance  of  human 
development  in  its  richest  diversity.'  Mill  has  in  mind  the 
hindrances  offered  to  such  an  ideal  in  heavy,  tyrannous,  custom  - 
ridden  Victorian  England.  Macaulay  was  surprised  at  the 
complaint  that  in  the  age  of  new  inventions,  phrenology, 
Comtism  (which  was  '  absurd  enough  '),  spirit-rapping,  and 
'  spasmodic  '  light  literature,  any  one  should  complain  of  a  want 
of  the  '  individual '  or  eccentric  element.  '  He  is  really  crying 
"  Fire  !  "  in  Noah's  Flood.'  But  this  misses  the  point  of  Mill, 
who  is  thinking  of  the  social  cold  shoulder  turned  to  the 
unorthodox.  Also  he  is  thinking  first  of  elect  minds  like  his 
own,  rather  than  of  mankind  at  large.  He  wants  free  play 
for  the  thinker,  the  reformer,  and  even  for  the  eccentric  or  un- 
conventional '  character,'  whom  Mill  worships  by  a  convention 
of  his  own.  It  is  not  too  plain  at  first  what  the  thinker  is  to  do 
with  his  freedom,  once  he  has  it,  except  try  experiments  in 
living  and  thresh  out  the  truth  by  endless  debating.  He 
is  to  '  follow  his  intellect  to  whatever  conclusions  it  may  lead  '  ; 
he  is  to  cast  out  the  devil,  who  tempts  him  to  fix  those  con- 
clusions in  advance  ;  he  is  not  '  to  sophisticate  with  an  intellect 
which  he  cannot  silence  ' — a  stroke  which  has  been  supposed 
to  glance  at  Newman.  This  done,  he  is  to  have  a  hearing, 
like  his  opponents.  The  utterance  of  opinion  must  not  be 
coerced  by  law  or  society.  Here  the  question  arises  :  Since 
there  must  be  some  limit  to  the  free  action  of  the  individual,  if 


58  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

not  to  his  utterance,  where  may,  and  where  must,  law  and  society 
step  in  to  impose  the  limit  ?  Mill's  general  answer  is  to  place  the 
burden  of  proof  upon  law  and  society  for  interfering  ;  his  own 
bias  was  against  their  doing  so.  It  was  a  bias  into  which  he 
had  not  settled  without  oscillations.  Lord  Morley  tells  us 
that  Mill  had  been  '  inclining  towards  over-government,  social 
and  political,'  and  that  '  the  composition  of  this  book  and  the 
influence  under  which  it  grew  kept  him  right.'  He  now  dreads 
the  meddling  of  the  state,  when  the  state  is  only  the  stupid 
majority  organised  into  officialdom.  The  actual  issues  that  he 
raises  in  regard  to  the  liquor  traffic,  education,  and  the  like, 
have  quite  changed  in  aspect  since  his  day  ;  and  all  the  time, 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  he  is  thinking  of  a  state  of  peace  and 
Ele  also,  no  doubt,  moves  overmuch  in  the  region  of 
pure  ideas  but  this  is  also  his  strength  ;  for  no  one  saw  clearer 
that  the  ultimate  conflict,  in  political  and  social  affairs,  is 
between  ideas  ;  and  that  not  only  before  they  are,  but  whilst 
they  are  being,  organised  into  action.  Mill  could  not  complain 
of  the  lack  of  '  discussion  '  over  his  Liberty.  His  hardest- 
headed  critic  was  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  who  is 
presently  to  be  noticed,  and  whose  Liberty,  Equality,  and 
Fraternity  (1873-4)  is  an  attack  along  the  whole  line. 

The  spirit  of  the  Liberty  rules  in  the  work  On  the  Subjection 
of  Women,  which  is  written  with  high-pitched  ardour  and 
remains  the  best  English  record  of  the  '  feminist '  cause  in  its 
earlier  phase.  It  shows  all  Mill's  force  and  weakness.  He  had 
a  fixed  idea  that  sex  can  and  should  be  made  to  count  for  far 
less  in  human  life  than  it  has  ever  done.  In  one  of  his  private 
'  thoughts  '  he  lays  down 

that  what  any  persons  may  do  freely  with  respect  to  sexual  relations 
should  be  deemed  to  be  an  unimportant  and  purely  private  matter, 
which  concerns  no  one  but  themselves.  If  children  are  the  result, 
then  indeed,  etc. 

Meredith's  Mrs.  Berry  could  here  have  told  the  philosopher 
something  ;  he  clearly  did  not  see  all  the  complexities  of  the 
case.  We  echo  Von  Sybel's 1  cry,  '  Does  Stuart  Mill  really 
depict  the  world  we  live  in  ?  '  However,  if  it  be  said  that  he 
did  not  know  much  about  women,  neither  do  we.  Mill's 
premisses  are  needlessly  wide  in  view  of  his  conclusions. 
Women  may  claim  a  fair  field  without  our  ignoring  the  irre- 
moveable  differences  of  sex.  Once  more  Mill's  bad  old  psy- 
chology of  the  tabula  rasa,  which  attributes  all  differences  to 
training  and  opportunity,  disserves  him.     Herein  he  goes  back, 


MILL'S  POLITICS  59 

behind  Bentham,  who  was  a  conservative  in  his  views  of  female 
development,  to  doctrinal  revolutionaries  like  Condorcet.  Mill 
is  on  surer  ground  when  he  simply  pleads,  against  a  priori 
objections,  that  women  should  have  all  civic  opportunities,  and 
also  advocates  equality  in  the  home  and  before  the  law.  He 
does  not  touch  on  the  question,  now  seen  to  lie  near  the  root 
of  the  matter,  of  economic  equality.  His  spirit  is  best  seen 
in  the  '  solemn  promise,'  now  printed  in  his  correspondence, 
which  he  voluntarily  added  to  his  marriage  vows.  All  this 
pleading  is  conceived  in  the  interest  not  only  of  the  removal 
of  unjust  restrictions,  but  of  '  human  development  in  its  richest 
diversity,'  both  male  and  female.  Mill  assumes  that  a  world 
of  diverse  and  original  types  will  be  noble  and  picturesque  ;  or 
at  any  rate,  for  the  sake  of  '  the  greater  good  of  human  freedom,' 
he  is  ready  to  take  the  risks  of  a  rich  diversity  which  includes 
an  allowance  of  Pecksniffs,  Sir  Pitt  Orawlejrs,  and  Rastignacs. 
This,  no  doubt,  is  a  sound  view  ;  and  Mill,  in  his  cult  of  origi- 
nality or  colour,  or  difference  from  other  men  ('  du  moins  je 
suis  autre  ')  is  more  of  a  Briton  than  he  might  have  cared  to 
admit.  Yet  we  are  struck  with  the  quaint  absence  of  colour  in 
his  colour-worship,  and  with  the  abstract  fervour  of  his  advice 
to  be  concrete  and  individual. 

His  views  on  the  franchise  and  popular  rights  appear  in  the 
article  on  De  Tocqueville  and  in  Considerations  on  Representative 
Government.  It  is  interesting  to  see  him  trying  to  conciliate 
his  dislike  of  Whiggism  and  privilege  with  his  equal  dislike 
of  mob-rule,  and  with  his  growing  sense  of  the  difference  between 
man  and  man.  He  believes  in  the  educative  power  of  the  vote, 
but  not  in  the  ballot  ;  in  stretching  the- franchise  downwards, 
but  also  in  giving  more  than  a  single  vote  to  the  better-trained 
citizen  ;  and  in  proportional  representation.  These  guards 
and  refinements  cut  him  off,  together  with  a  few  friends,  from 
the  vehement  popular  movement  of  his  time  ;  and  the  practical 
issues  have  long  since  changed.  In  one  respect  he  threw 
over  laissez-faire,  and  those  who  call  Mill  '  sentimental '  or 
'  doctrinaire  '  might  remember  his  letters  of  the  early  months 
of  1871,  in  which  he  advocates  national  military  service  :  the 
words  find  an  echo  to-day,  though  some  of  the  proper  names 
are  different  : 

It  will  be  an  uphill  fight  to  get  a  really  national  defensive  force, 
but  it  may  be  a  question  of  life  and  death  to  this  country  not 
only  to  have  it,  but  to  have  it  soon.  I  do  not  know  which  are  most 
smitten  with  imbecility,  those  who  are  for  trusting  our  safety  solely 
to  our  navy,  on  the  speculation  that  no  foreign  army  can  land  in 


60  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

England,  or  those  who,  after  crying  at  the  top  of  their  voices  that 
we  are  utterly  without  the  means  of  facing  an  enemy  in  the  field,  turn 
round  next  day  and  demand  that  we  should  instantly  go  to  war  with 
Russia  for  the  Black  Sea  or  with  Germany  for  France.  (Letters,  ii.  304.) 

The  Principles  of  Political  Economy  (1848)  gave  Mill  a  wider 
authority  than  the  Logic  ;  it  held  the  field  for  a  generation  ;  its 
large  plan,  its  clear  and  dignified  manner,  its  outlook  into 
political  philosophy,  and  above  all  the  enthusiasm  that  it 
reveals  for  the  good  of  the  worker,  duly  enhanced  its  fame. 
Mill's  power  of  quickening  a  technical  discussion  by  keeping 
its  remoter  applications  in  sight  was  never  better  seen.  The 
ultimate  problem  is  again  that  afterwards  stated  in  the  Liberty, 
but  worked  out  in  a  special  field.  What  are  the  conditions 
and  limitations  of  useful  state  interference  with  the  arrange- 
ments of  production,  distribution,  and  exchange  ?  Mill  starts, 
avowedly  as  an  hypothesis,  with  the  Ricardian  idea  of  the 
economic  man,  as  a  purely  wealth -seeking  animal,  and  illu- 
minates it  by  the  facts  of  economic  life.  On  his  way  he 
encounters  all  the  vital  questions  :  co-operation,  peasant 
ownership,  the  Malthusian  formulas,  and  the  relationship, 
actual  and  possible,  of  capital  and  labour  ;  and  the  great 
individualist  ends,  it  has  been  said,  '  well  on  the  way  to  state 
socialism.'  In  later  editions  Mill  revised,  amongst  other  things, 
his  defence  of  private,  and  especially  of  landed,  property.  I 
cannot  trespass  on  the  field  of  economy  ;  the  works  of  John 
Elliot  Cairnes,  William  Stanley  Jevons,  John  Ramsay  M'Culloch, 
and  others,  belong  to  science  ;  but  here  may  be  named  in 
parenthesis,  since  Mill  prompted  the  book,  Edward  Gibbon 
Wakefield's  View  of  the  Art  of  Colonisation  (1849),  a  classic  of 
controversy.  It  is  a  series  of  discursive  letters  urging  emi- 
gration, and  the  principle  of  '  federal-municipal,'  as  against 
Whitehall,  government.  Wakefield's  writing  is  informal  and 
racy,  his  satire  is  pointed  ;  his  labours  are  part  of  the  history 
of  Australasia. 

Mill's  short  book  on  Utilitarianism  has  been  much  assailed, 
not  to  say  riddled  ;  one  of  the  most  effective  criticisms  was  the 
modest  and  acute  Examination  (1870)  by  John  Grote,  Professor 
of  Moral  Philosophy  at  Cambridge.  Mill's  frankness  and  clear 
style  help  to  cast  light  upon  any  fissures  in  his  thinking.  His 
faith  in  unselfish  service,  which  every  page  exhibits,  has  to  rest 
on  the  rebuilt  masonry  of  the  old  empiricism,  and  the  question 
is  whether  such  a  foundation  is  strong  enough  to  bear  the  fabric. 
An  inducement,  on  Benthamite  premisses,  has  to  be  found  for 
practising  the  absolute  'altruism'  preached  by  Comte.     The 


MILL  AS  A  WRITER  61 

natural  purity  of  Mill's  own  motives  may  have  obscured  for 
him  the  pinch  of  the  problem.  The  Three  Essays  on  Religion 
were  not  printed  till  after  his  death,  and  must  be  read  along 
with  his  letters  and  Autobiography.  Mill  never  minded  speaking 
out,  but  he  showed  a  certain  canniness  in  his  dealing  with  his 
public,  preferring  to  give  it  only  one  shock  at  a  time.  The 
course  of  his  religious  opinions  had  been  affected  in  his  youth 
by  reading  the  hard,  literal,  and  very  robust  attack  on  '  natural 
religion,'  by  '  Philip  Beauchamp,'  published  in  1822.  '  Philip 
Beauchamp ' J  was  in  fact  Bentham,  whose  manuscript  was  edited 
and  fortified  by  Grote.  Nothing  better  shows  how  the  whole 
complexion  of  the  debate  changed  during  our  period,  than  a 
comparison  of  this  book  with  the  Three  Essays. 

IX 

Mill's  solicitude  to  be  fair  all  round  tames  down  his  ordinary 
style.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  this  kind  of  writing,  which 
accounts  for  Carlyle's  epithet  of  '  sawdusty  '  : 

But  though  each  side  greatly  exaggerates  its  own  theory,  out  of 
opposition  to  the  other,  and  no  one  holds  without  modification  to 
either,  the  two  doctrines  correspond  to  a  deep-seated  difference  in 
two  modes  of  thought  ;  and  though  it  is  evident  that  neither  of 
these  is  entirely  in  the  right,  yet  it  being  equally  evident  that 
neither  is  wholly  in  the  wrong,  we  must  endeavour  to  get  down  to 
what  is  at  the  root  of  each,  and  avail  ourselves  of  the  amount  of 
truth  that  exists  in  either.     (1861.) 

For  anything  like  sharp  eloquence  we  must  wait  until  Mill  is 
morally  indignant,  be  it  with  Whewell 2  or  Brougham  or 
Mansel.  His  sarcasms  against  the  Comtian  hierarchy  show  a 
contemptuous  skill.  A  more  exalted  strain  is  heard  in  The 
Subjection  of  Women  and  the  Liberty  ;  we  have  the  image  of 
Mrs.  Mill  prompting  the  philosopher.  But  Mill's  emotion,  his 
ardour  for  justice  and  freedom,  is  always  apt  to  break  out,  to 
flame  up,  through  the  measured  phrases.  He  has  a  keen 
vehement  sensibility  to  manage  ;  he  has  none  of  the  calm 
assurance  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  is  the  antipodes  of 
Hume  ;  he  has  not  the  same  kind  of  tranquil  grandeur,  nor 
does  he  say  his  destructive  things  in  the  same  urbane,  talking 
voice.  Mill's  inner  life  may  be  described  as  an  incessant  race 
between  his  reason  and  the  feelings  that  are  ever  seeking  to 
outrace  it.  Usually  this  element  is  repressed,  though  it  still 
animates  the  discourse.  The  ordinary  tone  is  that  of  a  man 
trying  to  convince  the  intelligent  reader,  to  reform  his  intellect, 


62  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

in  the  end  to  sway  his  vote,  and  not  to  bore  him.  Mill  writes 
not  for  the  expert,  but  for  everybody.  His  style  is  just  fitted 
to  the  purpose.  He  does  not  swamp  the  page  with  Spencer's 
technical  polysyllables  ;  he  uses  little  decoration,  but  expounds 
in  an  equable,  punctilious,  not  exactly  genial  way,  seldom 
changing  his  pace.  His  literary  aim  is  to  make  the  truth 
self-evident.  His  pains  in  laying  out  and  proportioning  his 
material  are  great.  He  omits  well.  He  has  the  best  French- 
academic  manner.  When  he  approaches  to  oratory,  we  feel 
that  a  little  more,  and  the  tones  would  be  too  piercing  ;  but  this 
danger  is  rarely  present. 

Mill,  then,  ranks  high  amongst  our  speculative  writers,  though 
he  has  none  of  Ferrier's  colour  and  daring,  nor  yet  the  classical 
form  and  felicity  of  Mansel.  The  soundest  way  is  to  compare 
him  with  authors  of  his  own  ancestry,  and  here  only  Hume  is 
his  superior.  A  thinker  will  not  soon  arise  who  cares  more 
truly  to  be  in  the  right.  It  is  good  to  read  him  after  the  em- 
phatic and  capricious  authors,  Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  whose  aim 
is  different.  He  left  no  issue  where  he  found  it,  and  his  candour 
enables  us  to  see  just  where  he  left  it.  This  quality  is  best  seen 
in  the  regions  where  it  is  hardest  to  preserve  :  in  social  and 
moral  philosophy,  and  in  politics  and  in  natural  theology,  where 
the  coals  are  always  hot. 


The  name  of  Alexander  Bain  (1819-1903)  should  be  mentioned 
here.  His  writing  has  little  more  grace  than  a  safe -deposit  ; 
but  the  safe  is  stacked  with  invaluable  documents,  and  Bain 
is  a  weighty  and  honest  thinker,  never  mistaking,  or  being  able 
to  mistake,  a  sentimental  for  a  scientific  transition.  He  wrote 
in  his  industrious  formal  way  on  rhetoric  and  composition,  for 
which  he  had  little  ear.  He  was  for  twenty  years  professor  at 
Aberdeen  until  1880,  and  there  upheld  an  unimaginative  but 
rigorous  version  of  the  philosophy  of  experience  ;  making  it 
his  affair  to  put  that  creed  into  a  more  fully  methodised  and 
pedagogic  shape  than  John  Stuart  Mill  (whose  Logic  he  helped 
to  revise),  and  working  in  sympathy  with  him,  but  independ- 
ently. Bain  had  won  his  rank  by  his  treatises  on  The  Senses 
and  the  Intellect  (1855)  and  The  Emotions  and  the  Will  (1859)  ; 
these  were  compacted  later  into  a  Manual  of  Mental  and  Moral 
Science.  He  signally  advanced  the  study  of  the  mind,  isolating 
it  from  metaphysics  into  a  separate  science,  correlating  it  with 
physiology,  deepening  the  theory  of  association,  and  more  than 


THE  STEPHENS  63 

foreshadowing  the  study  of  experimental  psychology.  He 
also  wrote  treatises  on  logic,  did  good  service  to  education,  and 
in  1876  founded  the  philosophical  quarterly  Mind,  which  keeps 
its  high  repute.  Bain  doubtless  belongs  to  science  more  than 
to  letters  ;  his  hard  rationalism,  which  recalls  the  elder  Mill 
rather  than  the  younger,  limits  the  '  experience  '  to  which  he 
appeals,  and  he  easily,  sometimes  comically,  misses  the  force 
of  the  '  emotions  '  which  he  chronicles.  But  his  faithful  and 
precise  records  of  the  two  Mills  (1882)  show  him  in  a  much  more 
humane  light,  like  his  rather  melancholy  Autobiography  ;  and 
the  accurate  cutting  of  his  language  is  welcome  after  much 
oratory. 

The  Stephen  family,  several  members  of  whom  call  for  men- 
tion in  our  survey,  is  eminent  for  its  performance  not  only  in 
law,  philosophy,  and  controversy,  but  in  pure  literature  :  in 
biography,  criticism,  and  essay -writing.  The  father,  Sir 
James  Stephen  (1789-1859),  a  barrister,  a  distinguished  public 
servant,  and  latterly  Professor  of  Modern  History  at  Cambridge, 
is  best  known  for  his  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical  Biography  (1849, 
reissued  from  the  Edinburgh  Review),  which  are  full  of  the 
family  vigour.  His  second  son,  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen 
(1829-94),  won  high  professional  note  as  a  judge,  Indian  legis- 
lator, and  jurist  ;  his  General  View  (1863-1890),  and  his  History 
( 1 883)  of  the  English  criminal  law  are  standard  works .  Stephen, 
though  a  scion  of  the  Utilitarians,  travelled  far  towards  the 
political  Right.  A  champion  at  intellectual  quarterstaff,  he 
enlisted  the  gifts  of  a  great  lawyer  and  some  of  the  convictions 
of  Carlyle  in  the  labours  of  critical  and  conservative  journalism. 
At  Cambridge  he  was  an  intimate  of  Maine,  another  distruster 
of  liberalism,  and  also  a  member  of  the  '  Apostles,'  a  club  of 
candid  '  intellectuals  '  which  has  numbered  many  men  of  note. 
In  1855  he  joined  the  staff,  along  with  Freeman,  Goldwin  Smith 
and  other  swordsmen,  of  the  newly-founded  Saturday  Review, 
of  which  the  ideal  was  plain  speaking,  contempt  of  sciolism  and 
sentiment,  and  a  somewhat  arid  and  ill-humoured  but  genuine 
devotion  to  truth.  Some  of  Stephen's  contributions  are  gar- 
nered in  his  Essays  by  a  Barrister  (1862),  and  in  three  series 
of  Horce  Sabbaticce,  of  which  the  first  is  dated  1892.  These 
papers  are  pure  exposition  and  criticism,  showing  in  the  highest 
degree  the  power  to  eviscerate  and  judge  a  complex  argument. 
The  treatises  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  Chilling  worth,  and  Hobbes,  and 
the  mental  posture  of  Laud  and  Clarendon,  are  dissected  with 
precision  ;  not  a  cut  is  wasted.  Stephen's  most  elaborate 
work  of  this  kind,  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity  (1873-4)  is 


64  PHILOSOPHY  AND  LETTERS 

another  string  of  rescued  articles,  and  appeared  just  after  Mill's 
death.  It  is  a  clear,  telling  piece  of  argument,  harsh  enough  in 
tone.  The  general  happiness  is  still  the  canon  ;  something  of 
the  earlier  Benthamite  temper  revives  in  Stephen  ;  but  this 
temper  is  oddly  united  with  an  authoritarian  spirit,  which  is 
partly  natural  and  partly  encouraged  by  the  teaching  of  his 
friend  Carlyle,  and  which  comes  out  strongest  in  the  chapter 
on  the  '  subjection  of  women.'  Stephen's  writing  is  rather 
bleak,  and  much  of  it  is  purely  negative  in  character ;  but  its 
solid  sincerity,  strength,  and  disdain  of  nourishes  are  admirable  ; 
and  it  comes  like  a  refreshing  east  wind  after  the  preciosity  and 
subtlety  of  some  other  styles — after  a  course  of  Walter  Pater, 
for  instance,  or,  for  that  matter,  of  Newman.  Sir  James  Fitz- 
james  Stephen's  son,  James  Kemieth  (1859-92),  died  young, 
after  producing  two  little  volumes  of  sharp-edged  and  highly- 
finished  satiric  verse  ;  and  his  younger  brother  and  biographer, 
Leslie,  afterwards  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  (1832-1904),  will  be 
noticed  hereafter  as  a  philosopher  (Ch.  iv.),  and  as  a  critic  and 
climber  (Ch.  xi.). 


CHAPTER   IV 
PHILOSOPHY,  SCIENCE,  AND  LETTERS 


The  advances  and  annexations  of  science  are  the  boldest 
feature  of  all  in  the  intellectual  map  of  the  last  century.  After 
1830,  and  yet  more  after  1860,  the  spirit  of  science  increasingly 
permeates  philosophy,  and  also  invades  literature,  in  a  manner 
that  may  now  be  sketched.  The  classic  achievements  of  men 
like  Sir  John  Herschel  in  astronomy  and  physics,  of  John 
Dalton  in  chemistry,  and  of  Michael  Faraday  in  electrical 
science,  are  not  in  question  here  ;  nor  is  the  more  popular  but 
valued  work  of  the  geologist,  Hugh  Miller,  whose  gallant 
record  in  his  autobiography,  My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters 
(1854),  is  to  be  remembered.  But  the  impact  of  geological  and 
biological  discovery  upon  general  thought,  the  influence  of 
Lyell  and  Darwin,  is  more  relevant.  For  the  old  'catastro- 
phic '  view  of  geological  change  was  silenced  by  the  labours  of 
Sir  Charles  Lyell  (1797-1875)  ;  the  history  of  the  earth  was 
reduced  to  the  operation  of  natural  uniformities,  and  the  whole 
question  of  its  age  revolutionised,  by  this  '  attempt  to  explain 
the  former  changes  of  its  surface  by  causes  now  in  operation.' 
Lyell's  first  great  work,  The  Principles  of  Geology,  appeared  in 
1830-3,  received  many  increments  and  revisions,  and  ran  through 
eleven  editions  in  his  lifetime .  His  Antiquity  of  Man  ( 1 863)  and 
his  Elements  of  Geology  (1838)  were  not  less  influential.  Geo- 
logy included  a  study  of  the  changes  in  the  organic  world  ; 
Lyell  discussed  the  origin  and  extinction  of  species  ;  and  his 
conversion,  which  was  not  immediate,  and  which  entailed  some 
reserves,  to  the  views  of  Darwin,  powerfully  affected  opinion. 
The  '  anti-transmutationists,'  Huxley  wrote,  '  regarded  him 
ever  afterwards  as  Pallas  Athene  might  have  looked  at  Dian, 
after  the  Endymion  affair.'  But  to  the  last  he  resisted  the 
argument  of  The  Descent  of  Man.  Lyell's  style  is  plain,  grave, 
and  weighty  ;  he  told  by  the  mass  and  strength  of  his  reason- 
ing, and  by  the  extreme  cautiousness,  noted  by  Darwin,  of  his 
mind  ;   and  his  orthodox  belief,  set  forth  at  the  conclusion  of 

VOL.  I.  B 


6G  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

the  Principles,  in  a  designing  intelligence,  doubtless  aided  in 
reconciling  prejudice. 

Darwin,  in  his  '  historical  sketch  '  introductory  to  the  Origin 
of  Species,  has  a  good  word  for  the  once  popular,  and  still 
readable,  Vestiges  x  of  the  Natural  History  of  Creation,  which 
appeared  unsigned  in  1844.  Twelve  editions,  involving  re- 
visions and  corrections,  were  issued  in  twenty  years.  The 
writer  was  Robert  Chambers,  the  Scottish  publisher,  co- 
founder  of  Chambers's  Journal,  and  compiler  of  The  Book  of 
Days  (1862-4)  :  a  busy  and  capable  person  of  letters.  The 
authorship  of  the  Vestiges  was  only  revealed  in  1884,  thirteen 
years  after  the  death  of  Chambers.  Rumour  had  guessed  at 
Lyell,  or  Thackeray,  or  the  Prince  Consort  !  The  book  had 
raised  no  little  dust  in  its  time,  and  in  Darwin's  judgement 
it  had 

done  excellent  service  in  calling  attention  in  this  country  to  the 
subject,  in  removing  prejudice,  and  in  thus  preparing  the  ground 
for  the  reception  of  analogous  views. 

He  also  speaks  of  the  want  of  accuracy  and  scientific  caution 
shown  in  the  earlier  editions  ;  and  the  book  was  soon  anti- 
quated as  a  contribution  to  knowledge  :  no  wonder,  when  it 
strides  lightly  over  the  ground  of  astronomy,  geology,  zoology, 
and  anthropology.  But  it  served  its  turn  in  shaking,  before 
the  evidence  was  really  presented,  the  belief  in  the  doctrine  of 
special  creation : 

The  construction  of  the  globe  .  .  .  [is]  the  result  not  of  any 
immediate  or  personal  exertion  on  the  part  of  the  Deity,  but  of 
natural  laws  which  are  expressions  of  His  will.  What  is  to  hinder 
our  supposing  that  the  organic  creation  is  also  a  result  of  natural 
laws  which  are  in  like  manner  the  expression  of  His  will  ? 

Chambers  assumes  the  theistic  premiss,  and  the  omnipresence 
of  design  ;  his  particular  view  of  the  origin  of  species  has  lost 
interest  ;  but  he  has  his  place  in  the  history  of  the  conception 
of  development  ;  he  was  the  earnest  amateur  who  caught  the 
public  ear.  And  he  writes  well,  with  a  breath  of  philosophical 
as  well  as  religious  fervour  ;  believing  that 

the  present  system  is  but  a  part  of  a  Whole,  a  stage  in  the  Great 
Progress,  and  that  the  Redress  is  in  reserve. 

The  place  of  Charles  Robert  Darwin  2  (1809-82)  in  this  review 
may  not  at  first  be  apparent.  He  wrote  no  polemic  ;  pure 
philosophy  he  hardly  touched  ;  he  had  no  rhetoric,  good  or  bad, 


DARWIN  AND  WALLACE  67 

in  his  composition  ;  he  ceased  to  care  for  poetry,  and  lamented 
the  decline  of  his  aesthetic  instincts  ;  he  would  not  have  called 
himself  a  man  of  letters.  But  letters  have  a  share  in  his  glory 
and  cannot  sacrifice  his  name.  He  is  a  writer  ;  his  intellectual 
power  and  candour  find  the  style  that  they  deserve  ;  and  it 
reveals  to  us,  in  a  transparent  way,  the  majestic  figure  of  the 
man  himself,  standing  back  and  watching,  ever  so  modestly 
and  with  some  surprise,  the  effect  of  his  work — the  huge  dis- 
placement caused  by  the  tidal  wave  of  his  great  idea,  as  it 
flooded  the  mind  of  the  world,  and  so  penetrated,  by  many  a 
winding  channel,  into  literature  too. 

His  first  book,  the  Journal  (1839)  of  his  voyage  in  the  Beagle, 
is  full  of  the  sense  of  enjoyment,  and  also  of  the  '  aesthetic 
sense,'  and  of  appreciation  of  things  seen.  '  I  am  sure  now,' 
he  said  afterwards,  '  that  I  felt  most  sublime  in  the  forests  '  of 
Brazil ;  and  not,  as  he  had  at  first  thought,  on  the  mountains. 
The  charm  of  the  tale  also  lies  in  its  humanity,  but  above  all 
in  its  fidelity  to  fact,  and  in  its  unity  of  purpose.  Darwin's 
mind  is  a  pure  mirror  ;  he  does  not,  like  Kinglake  and  many 
travellers,  impose  his  own  prejudice  or  irony  on  the  scene. 
In  this  he  recalls  his  friend,  the  co-discoverer  of  the  principle 
of  natural  selection,  the  long-lived  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  * 
(1823-1913),  whose  Travels  on  the  Amazon  and  Rio  Negro  (1853) 
and  Malay  Archipelago  (1869)  also  have  the  note  of  the  open- 
air,  gypsy,  all -enduring  naturalist,  and  who  afterwards  pro- 
duced notable  works  on  the  evolutionary  theory  (Geographical 
Distribution  of  Animals,  1876),  and  on  many  other  themes. 
Some  eminent  biologists  have  been  most  at  home  in  the  labora- 
tory, and  have  gone  out  of  doors  to  get  a  holiday  from  observa- 
tion ;  but  Darwin's  affair,  like  Wallace's,  was  to  study  live 
creatures  in  their  habitat.  His  notes  breathe  a  spirit  of  happi- 
ness, and  show  a  mind  as  patient  as  nature  herself,  matching 
itself  against  her,  and  tracking  down  her  processes.  This 
temper  is  reflected  in  his  language,  and  explains  some  of  the 
popularity  of  a  book  like  Formation  of  Vegetable  Mould  through 
the  Action  of  Worms  (1881). 

Many  years  of  intense  work  passed  between  Darwin's  return 
from  his  voyage  and  the  publication  in  1859  of  his  chief  work  : 
On  the  Origin  of  Species  by  means  of  Natural  Selection,  or  the 
Preservation  of  Favoured  Races  in  the  Struggle  for  Life.  He  has 
told  at  length,  and  many  have  retold,  the  history  of  its  slow 
inception  and  painful  execution.  Well  known,  too,  is  his 
honourable  and  fraternal  treatment  of  Wallace  ;  the  outcry 
that  greeted  the  Origin  ;  the  appearance  of  Huxley  in  the  lists, 


6S  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

and  his  disposal  of  Bishop  Wilberforce  at  Oxford  in  1860. 
Huxley's  chapter,  inserted  in  the  Life  of  Darwin,  on  the  '  recep- 
tion of  the  Origin  of  Species,'  was  published  in  1887,  and  is 
classical.  The  famous  volume,  which  reacted  on  universal 
thought,  is  still  difficult  reading,  and  that  not  merely  for  the 
laity.  Darwin  took  immense  pains  over  the  style,  and  lamented 
it  as  bad  ;  '  no  nigger  with  the  lash  over  him  could  have  worked 
harder  at  clearness  than  I  have  done.'  But  his  judgement  was 
too  severe.  If  the  style  is  not  always  clear,  that  is  due  partly 
to  the  rival  claims  of  concision,  partly  to  the  intricacy  of  the 
matter,  and  to  the  puzzling  but  necessary  interlacement  of  the 
methods  of  induction,  deduction,  and  analogy.  The  hypo- 
thesis of  natural  selection  is  set  out  first,  and  next  the  general 
view  of  evolution,  for  which  that  hypothesis  for  the  first  time 
provided  a  vera  causa.  The  evolutionary  idea  had  long  been 
current  ;  its  most  recent  exponent  had  been  Herbert  Spencer  ; 
it  now  received  definition  ;  and  Darwin's  theory,  while  it 
avowedly  did  not  admit  of  direct  proof,  affected  every  one's 
mental  picture  of  the  living  world  as  a  vast  and  sensitive  web  of 
interrelations.  The  conception  of  the  'struggle  for  life,'  sug- 
gested to  both  Wallace  and  Darwin  by  a  reading  of  Malthus, 
implied  an  ubiquitous  process,  self-acting  from  the  first,  by 
which  the  balance  of  power  amongst  species  and  individuals 
was  only  kept  stable,  or  altered  slowly,  by  war.  Somehow 
this  process  had  brought  man  also  into  being  ;  and  could  it  be 
supposed  to  fail  throughout  the  course  of  his  own  history,  once 
he  had  appeared  ?  All  these  and  more  implications,  or  mis- 
applications, of  Darwin's  idea,  told  upon  general  thought  and 
figured  in  the  literature  of  controversy. 

He  himself  went  on  with  his  proper  work,  The  Descent  of 
Man,  and  Selection  in  Relation  to  Sex  (1871),  and  Expression  of 
the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals  (1872)  may  be  mentioned. 
Like  his  numerous  other  books,  which  are  mostly  in  the  fields 
of  botany  or  geology,  they  are  re-trials,  in  one  or  another  field, 
of  his  main  hypothesis,  which  itself  became  enriched  and 
extended  as  he  worked.  The  Descent  of  Man  is  another 
many-sided  argument,  masterly  and  lucid  in  conduct.  The 
Expression  of  the  Emotions  is,  owing  to  its  subject,  the  most 
humanly  interesting  of  Darwin's  writings,  along  with  his 
letters  and  his  chapter  of  autobiography  ;  and  his  account 
of  his  grandfather,  Erasmus  Darwin  the*  poet,  is  to  be  re- 
membered too. 

He  is  not  so  much  impressed  by  the  waste  and  cruelty  of 
nature  as  are  some  of  those  to  whom  he  furnished  material  : 


DARWIN  69 

and  the  spectacle  of  a  world  developed  through  the  workings 
of  internecine  strife  does  not  make  him  melancholy  : 

When  we  reflect  on  this  struggle  we  may  console  ourselves  with 
the  full  belief  that  the  war  of  nature  is  not  incessant,  that  no  fear 
is  felt,  that  death  is  generally  prompt,  and  that  the  vigorous,  the 
health}'-,  and  the  happy  survive  and  multiply. 

Darwin  has  little  of  the  tragic  or  mystical  sense  which  is 
evident  in  another  great  observer,  J.-H.  Fabre,  whose  wasps 
and  spiders  seem  to  be  moved  by  a  blind  instinct,  mechanically 
indeed,  but  as  if  with  a  purpose  not  their  own.  The  same 
happy  naturalism  is  seen  in  the  descriptions  of  shame  or  terror 
in  The  Expression  of  the  Emotions.  These  are  not  themselves 
emotional,  nor  yet  are  they  impassive  ;  but  they  are  full  of  the 
pleasure  of  demonstration,  and  are  human  too.  We  read 
without  surprise  of  Darwin  that,  '  although  he  was  so  anxious 
to  observe  accurately  the  expression  of  a  crying  child,  his 
sympathy  with  the  grief  spoiled  the  observation.'  Quiet 
lucidity  and  grace  (the  former  quality  being  painfully  earned) 
distinguish  his  style,  and  are  not  less  apparent  when  he  strays 
into  general  speculation.  Nothing  can  be  more  limpid,  or 
more  unconsciously  fresh  and  original,  than  his  utterances 
on  theology,  collected  by  his  biographer.  Here  Darwin  con- 
trasts well,  even  as  a  writer,  with  the  professional  disputants 
in  either  camp. 

There  remain  for  mention  some  of  the  men  of  science  who 
expanded  or  applied  his  conceptions,  or  who  otherwise  im- 
pinged upon  philosophy,  and  who  are  also  of  mark  in  letters. 
Spencer,  Huxley,  Lewes,  Tyndall,  and  Clifford  may  be  selected. 
They  were  all  aggressive  ;  all  of  them,  except  possibly  Spencer, 
were  investigators  ;  and  they  were  all,  in  more  or  less  degree, 
conduits  between  the  sources  of  pure  thought  or  knowledge 
and  the  lay  educated  world  :  some  of  them  irrigated  even  the 
'low  fat  levels'  of  public  opinion.  They  gave,  that  is,  pub- 
licity to  the  conclusions  and  the  claims  of  science.  The  sur- 
prising change  they  wrought  during  this  period  may  be  measured 
by  a  glance  at  Sir  John  Herschel's  Preliminary  Discourse  on 
the  Study  of  Natural  Philosophy  (1830),  a  well -worded  book 
which  inspired  Darwin,  and  which,  besides  sketching  a  theory 
of  induction,  was  a  still  needful  defence,  from  the  orthodox 
side,  of  the  freedom  of  physical  inquiry,  and  a  popular  outline 
of  its  results. 


70  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 


II 


The  works  of  Herbert  Spencer1  (1820-1903)  belong  to  the 
history  of  thought  and  science,  but  they  also  have  more  con- 
nexion with  literature  than  might  at  first  be  feared.  No 
criticism  can  be  risked  here  on  Spencer's  philosophy,  and  no 
description  of  it  ;  but  some  landmarks  2  may  be  noted,  and 
some  features  of  his  singular  mind  and  temper  and  of  his 
writing. 

He  began  to  publish  about  1842  ;  his  period  of  ferment  lasted 
till  1858.  He  began  as  he  ended,  an  out-and-out  individualist, 
as  can  be  seen  from  his  work  on  The  Proper  Sphere  of  Govern- 
ment and  his  Social  Statics  (1850)  ;  and  the  first  version  of  his 
Principles  of  Psychology  appeared  in  1855.  He  also  wrote 
many  essays,  where  most  of  his  fruitful  ideas  can  be  seen  in  a 
scattered  form.  He  always  had  a  view  about  everything  ; 
'  from  principles  of  ethics,'  as  he  proudly  says, '  to  a  velocimeter, 
from  a  metaphysical  doctrine  to  a  binding-pin.'  He  had  been 
trained  as  an  engineer.  Pictures  of  those  implements  appear 
in  his  Autobiography  (1904).  The  topics  of  his  essays  of  various 
dates  range,  in  fact,  from  Comtism,  the  nebular  hypothesis, 
and  '  personal  beauty '  to  railway  policy  and  the  philosophy  of 
style.  But  in  January  1858  he  wrote  to  his  father  :  '  Within 
the  last  ten  days  my  ideas  on  various  matters  have  suddenly 
crystallised  into  a  complete  whole.'  The  programme  of  the 
great  scheme  of  Synthetic  Philosophy  was  published  in  1860, 
with  an  imposing  list  of  backers,  including  Charles  Kingsley, 
and  '  George  Eliot,  Esq.,'  J.  A.  Froude,  and  F.  W.  Newman. 

The  plan  was  closely  adhered  to,  and  took  thirty-six  years  to 
execute  ;  Spencer  showed  a  sublime  tenacity  and  devotion  to 
his  work.  First  Principles  (1862)  was  followed,  with  sundry 
overlappings,  dislocations,  and  revisions,  by  the  Principles  of 
Biology  (1864-7),  of  Psychology  (1870-2),  of  Sociology  (1876-96), 
and  of  Ethics  (1879-93).  Spencer  also  presided  over  the  large 
syndicate -enterprise,  Descriptive  Sociology,  and  wrote  many 
lesser  articles  and  tractates  on  heredity,  government,  and  other 
things.  Outside  the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  his  most  popular  and 
pointed  works  are  Education  (1861)  and  The  Study  of  Sociology 
(1872). 

The  huge  synthesis,  designed  to  cover  almost  the  whole 
range  of  philosophy,  has  not  affected  the  higher  thought  like 
Hegel's  or  like  Comte's  ;  but  in  vogue  it  had  no  rival.  It  has 
had  its  chance  in  most  of  the  Western  languages,  and  in  Russia, 
India,   Japan,  and   America.     It   proffered  a  comprehensive 


HERBERT  SPENCER  71 

and  coherent  outfit  of  truth.  It  was  an  effort  to  apply  one 
large  key-conception  to  matter,  to  life,  to  mind,  to  society,  and 
to  conduct.  The  crown  of  the  fabric  was  the  inquiry  into  man, 
considered  as  a  being  only  partially  moralised  and  rationalised, 
and  therefore  imperfectly  happy,  in  an  organised  community. 
Spencer  wrote  both  before  and  after  Darwin,  whose  conclusions 
he  saluted  as  verifying  in  a  special  field  the  broader  idea  that  he 
had  himself  announced.  It  is  due  to  Spencer  almost  as  much 
as  to  Darwin  that  we  now  cannot  but  think  in  evolutionary 
terms.  But  he  gave  his  own  colouring  to  the  word.  Evolution, 
as  he  elaborately  defines  it,  comes  to  him  to  mean  progress,  and 
progress  means  hope.  It  is  this  transition  in  his  argument 
that  has  been  most  keenly  attacked.  Spencer's  conclusion 
and  outlook  were  thus  broadly  optimistic.  It  was  a  large  and 
encouraging,  if  not  exactly  cheerful,  reading  of  the  universe, 
with  the  supernatural  excluded  and,  what  was  more,  with  the 
belief  in  the  supernatural  explained  away.  No  bigger  and 
braver  attempt  had  been  made  to  put  heart  into  naturalism, 
"or,  in  the  ebb  and  chaos  of  beliefs  during  the  later  Victorian  age, 
to  find  a  substitute  for  the  old  ?rligious  emotions.  Comtism 
made  a  similar  attempt,  but  Spencer  had  a  far  wider  public 
than  Comte,  whose  system  he  attacked  at  every  point. 

So  vast  a  target  was  naturally  shot  at  from  all  sides.  First 
Principles  was  assailed  by  Gladstone,  Mansel,  and  Martineau. 
The  Oxford  Hegelians,  like  Thomas  Hill  Green  and  William 
Wallace,  dissected  Spencer's  metaphysic  or  want  of  metaphysic. 
His  ethical  and  other  theories  were  sharply  sifted  at  Cambridge 
by  Henry  Sidgwick  ;  and  his  friend  and  brother-in-arms, 
Huxley,  saw  conflict  rather  than  harmony  between  the  process 
of  the  cosmic  order  and  the  moral  effort  of  mankind.  Spencer's 
views  in  every  field  of  science  were  criticised  ;  his  definition  of 
life  was  mocked  at  by  men  of  letters  ;  his  hatred  of  state  control 
set  him  in  conflict  with  the  whole  movement  of  socialism.  Yet 
all  this  meant  that  he  was  taken  seriously.  Each  of  his  major 
works  keeps  at  least  an  historic  position.  We  are  told  on 
authority  x  that  his  Biology,  with  all  abatements  made,  remains 
a  classic.  Psychology  has  grown,  partly  on  the  experimental 
side,  partly  through  a  larger  gleaning  of  the  '  varieties  of 
experience,'  partly  through  a  restatement  of  its  metaphysical 
basis  ;  but  some  of  Spencer's  results  have  been  used  and 
absorbed.  His  collections  of  material,  as  well  as  his  specula- 
tions, impelled  the  growing  science  of  anthropology.  Probably 
his  most  fruitful  work  was  in  the  field  of  sociology  and 
ethic. 


72  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 


in 


Two  paradoxical  traits  in  Spencer  may  be  picked  out  here. 

The  first  is  best  seen  in  his  Data  of  Ethics.    This  cold -tempered, 

comically  detached  theorist,  self-absorbed  and  rather  cheerless, 

is  a  preacher  of  happiness.     He  had  not  had  enough  of  it 

himself.     '  Life,'  he  says,  '  is  not  for  work,  but  work  is  for  life.' 

'  Be  a  boy  as  long  as  you  can.'     Pleasure,  or  happiness,  he 

defines  in  terms  of  life,  or  fife  in  terms  of  pleasure,  it  is  hard  to 

say  which.     The  '  tide  of  life  '  is  a  favourite  phrase  with  him. 

All  conduct,  he  says,  is  an  adaptation,  and  moral  conduct  is  an 

adaptation  of  life  to  the  ends  that  intensify  life  most  and  that 

ensure  survival.     Moral  intuitions  express  in  shorthand  the 

experience  of  the  races  that  have  lasted  through  obedience  to 

them.     We  must  have  faith  in  the  far-off  completion  of  the 

coincidence    between   personal   and    '  altruistic  '    ends.     Still, 

only  '  relative  happiness,'  or  the  choice  of  lesser  evils,  is  possible 

as  yet.     Virtue  brings  happiness  to  the  individual  only  '  in  the 

majority  of  cases.'     It  has  not  brought  happiness  to  Herbert 

Spencer,  who,  though  moved  purely  by  the  '  desire  to  further 

human  welfare,'  has  had  little  pleasure  in  the  long  run,  nor  a 

'  feeling  appreciably  above  equanimity.'     None  the  less  is  he 

sure  that 

no  contemptuous1  title  of  'pig-philosophy'  will  alter  the  eternal 
fact  that  Misery  is  the  highway  to  Death,  while  Happiness  is  added 
Life,  and  the  giver  of  Life. 

To  that  ancient  tenet  the  conception  of  evolution  gives  a  new 
depth.  In  the  age  of  Carlyle  all  this  needed  saying  ;  and 
Spencer's  language,  often  creaking  and  cumbrous,  rises  to 
dignity  when  he  declares  his  faith. 

Another  trait  separates  him  from  some  of  his  mental 
ancestors  ;  it  is  the  sense  of  mystery.  In  this  impersonal, 
pedagogic  mind  there  is  the  fatal  seed  of  romance  ;  and 
Carlyle 's  own  '  immensities  and  eternities  '  reappear  in  a 
heavier  dialect.  In  his  youth  Spencer  had  read  Prometheus 
Unbound  with  enthusiasm.  Science,  not  less  than  the  historic 
creeds,  is  pronounced  bankrupt  in  face  of  the  ultimate  riddle. 
The  Absolute,  or  the  Unknowable,  must  inspire  an  emotion 
which  can  neither  be  effaced  nor  defined.  Spencer,  in  the 
wake  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  limits  knowledge  to  the  finite  ; 
but  he  quits  them  promptly  when  they,  passing  into  the  religious 
sphere,  affirm  many  things  concerning  that  which  has  no 
predicate  but  existence,  save  that  somehow  it  is  the  ground  of 


HERBERT  SPENCER  73 

all  existence.  But  he  sees  that  the  questions  which  can  never 
be  answered  must  always  be  asked.  In  his  old  age  he  owns  to 
feeling  a  certain  '  sympathy,  based  on  community  of  need,' 
with  the  discarded  churches.  He  has  no  such  answer  as  theirs, 
but  he  wishes  that  he  had  one.  He  would  like  to  find  more 
sense  in  the  Universe.  '  What  if  of  all  that  is  thus  incompre- 
hensible to  us,  there  exists  no  comprehension  anywhere  ?  ' 
What  is  meant  by  the  teeming  life  on  the  ocean -floor,  by  the 
dead  '  thirty  millions  of  remote  suns,'  or  by  the  growth  of  mind 
'  out  of  what  seems  unconscious  m'atter '  and  by  its  prospective 
relapse  thereinto  ?  In  such  passages  Spencer  commands  an 
eloquence  of  the  soul,  and  even  of  language.  His  is  a  kind  of 
inverted  mysticism,  without  the  mystic's  revelation.  His 
'  Absolute  '  or  '  Unknowable  '  was  of  course  another  target 
for  critics.  To  some  it  seemed  a  mere  zero  '  hypostatiscd  '  ; 
others  urged  that  he  really  professed  to  know  a  good  deal 
about  it  after  all ;  others  called  it  a  question-begging 
label  for  that  which  as  yet  is,  but  may  not  always  be, 
unknown.  But  there  is  grandeur  of  vision  in  Herbert  Spencer, 
when  he  foresees  the  day  when  no  man  shall  ask  why  he  need 
help  his  neighbour,  or  when  he  muses  on  the  Nameless,  of  which 
the  natural  order  is  both  the  inevitable  consequence  and  the 
impenetrable  screen.  Indifferent  to  the  past,  he  does  not 
know  when  he  is  only  making  rediscoveries  ;  but  he  is  all  the 
fresher  for  that  :  his  '  lack  of  regard  of  authority,'  he  rightly 
says,  '  is  a  principal  cause  of  what  success  I  have  had  in  philo- 
sophical inquiry.'  It  is  true  that  everything  accepted — a 
machine,  a  theory,  or  a  custom — had  to  prove  its  innocence  to 
Spencer,  and  usually  failed  to  do  so,  and  that  he  was  ever  ready 
to  put  it  right. 

He  is  certainly  a  Philistine  on  a  royal  scale,  with  a  delightful 
apathy  to  the  history  of  culture.  His  Education :  Intellectual, 
Moral,  and  Physical,  which  was  translated,  so  we  are  informed, 
even  into  Mohawk,  is  a  plea  for  making  science  the  staple 
training  for  the  young.  Often  he  is  before  his  time  ;  he  urges 
bodily  training  for  girls,  humaner  discipline  for  children,  and 
instruction  in  the  business  of  the  citizen  for  everybody.  But 
languages  and  letters,  like  history,  go  very  much  to  the  wall. 
Spencer  could  not  get  through  Plato,  or  trouble  with  the 
'  languages  of  two  extinct  peoples.'  '  Had  Greece  and  Rome 
never  existed,  human  life  and  the  right  conduct  of  it  would 
have  been  in  their  essentials  exactly  what  they  are  now.' 
Cromwell  having  been  dead  so  long,  why  trouble,  with  Carlyle, 
to  understand  him  ?     Spencer  tells  us  with  sorrow  how  one 


74  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

of  his  assistants,  a  graduate  in  the  humanities,  actually 
thought  that  mammals  were  endowed  with  gizzards.  So  much 
for  the  historic  universities.  In  the  same  sense  he  retorted 
on  Matthew  Arnold  : 1 

The  men  of  letters,  in  their  early  days  dieted  on  grammars  and 
lexicons,  and  in  their  later  days  occupied  with  belles  lettres,  Bio- 
graphy, and  a  History  made  up  mainly  of  personalities,  are  by 
their  education  and  course  of  life  left  almost  without  scientific  ideas 
of  a  definite  kind. 

So  much  for  humanism.  Elsewhere  Spencer  calls  the  refrain 
of  a  ballad  '  the  inane  repetition  of  an  idea.' 

For  all  this,  he  is  no  outcast  from  letters.  Like  Mill,  he  began 
as  a  journalist,  and  has  some  of  the  instincts  of  the  craft.  He 
implies  that  in  writing  Social  Statics  he  made  a  point  of  being 
lively  :  and  his  use,  at  this  stage,  of  exclamatory  questions  and 
rhetorical  instances  reminds  us  of  Macaulay.  '  Though  my 
style  is  lucid,  it  has,  as  compared  with  some  styles,  a  monotony 
that  displeases  me.'  Lucid  it  is,  and  it  is  also  consecutive, 
carrying  us  along  well.  The  massive  argument  is  unreeled 
without  halt  or  disorder. 

There  appears  to  be  in  me  a  dash  of  the  artist,  which  has  all 
along  made  the  achievement  of  beauty  a  stimulus  ;  not,  of  course, 
beauty  as  commonly  conceived,  but  such  beauty  as  may  exist  in  a 
philosophical  structure. 

Spencer  said  that  he  was  '  never  puzzled,"  meaning  that  he  did 
not  travail  in  thought,  but  let  his  ideas  settle  of  themselves  and 
emerge  into  harmony.  The  effect  is  felt  in  his  writing,  and 
contrasts  with  Mill's  eager  searchings  and  qualifications.  For 
example,  Spencer's  description  in  his  Psychology  of  his  feelings 
by  the  sea -shore  is  simple  and  excellent,  and  his  sarcastic 
recitals  in  such. chapters  as  that  on  '  Ceremonial '  in  his  Ethics 
are  piquant  enough. 

The  philosophy  of  Comte,2  first  actually  decocted  by  Harriet 
Martineau  (Positive  Philosophy,  1853),  was  much  translated, 
preached,  reviled,  and  analysed  during  this  period.  The 
religion  founded  on  the  negation  of  '  first  philosophy  '  enlisted 
a  notable  band  of  '  joined  members,'  and  a  few  of  its  temples 
still  stand  in  England.  The  Philosophic  positive  (1830-42) 
was  assailed  in  the  Sixties  by  Huxley  and  Spencer,  and  judged 
by  Mill.  Few  except  the  professors  of  the  faith  had  a  good 
word  for  the  Systeme  de  politique  positive  (1851-4),  with  its 
quasi-Catholic  cult,  its  pedantic  hierarchy,  and  its  tyrannous 
philosopher-rulers.    But    the    ethical    fervour    of    Comtism 


LEWES— HUXLEY  75 

powerfully  coloured  the  writing  of  George  Eliot,  and  also  that 
of  her  companion  George  Henry  Lewes  (1817-78)  ;  who  was  a 
capable  dramatic  critic,  a  wretched  novelist,  and  editor  awhile 
of  the  Fortnightly  Review.  Lewes  was  the  first  Englishman  to 
attempt  a  Biographical  History  of  Philosophy  (1845-6),  after- 
wards enlarged.  But  his  denial  of  the  value  of  metaphysic 
(which  impenitently  went  on  flourishing)  did  not  qualify  him 
for  the  task.  Lewes  writes  with  vigour,  and  with  a  lively  and 
attractive  ease.  He  was  a  scientific  naturalist  ;  and  he  ad- 
vanced psychological  study,  especially  on  the  biological  side. 
In  his  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind  (1874-9),  moving  away  from 
Comtism,  he  tried  to  distinguish  between  the  metaphysics 
which  are  permissible,  and  those  which  are  not  ('  metempirics  '). 
His  work  on  The  Physical  Basis  of  Mind  has  been  praised  by 
experts.  But  his  best  book  by  far  is  his  Life  of  Goethe  1  (1855), 
a  vivid,  open-minded  piece  of  exploration  and  narrative,  on  an 
inexhaustible  subject.  Lewes  was  perhaps  more  at  home 
with  Goethe's  human  than  with  his  intellectual  or  artistic  side  ; 
but  his  book  remains  the  best,  on  its  own  scale,  in  English. 

IV 

In  the  case  of  Thomas  Henry  Huxley  2  (1825-95)  there  is  no 
impediment  to  the  happy  union  of  science  and  letters.  He  is, 
indeed,  one  of  the  best  prose  writers  of  his  time,  with  his  pure, 
rapid,  and  athletic  English,  his  controversial  skill  and  honesty, 
his  ironic  wit,  and  his  note  of  life  and  experience,  which  is 
most  unlike  the  detachment  of  Herbert  Spencer.  Huxley  had 
a  long  apprenticeship  as  a  voyaging  naturalist  and  investi- 
gator, which  qualified  him  for  his  illustrious  work  in  zoology 
and  biology,  before  he  was  known  to  the  general  public.  Many 
of  his  researches  are  gathered  into  the  volumes  of  his  Scientific 
Memoirs  ;  and  his  teaching  manuals  of  physiography  and  other 
sciences  are  accepted  patterns  of  their  kind.  He  came  into 
general  note  after  the  appearance  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  as 
the  most  powerful  champion  of  Darwinism  and  of  the  whole 
theory  of  evolution.  His  support  gained  in  force  from  his 
critical  reserves.  His  book,  Evidence  as  to  Man's  Place  in 
Nature,  appeared  in  1863,  eight  years  before  The  Descent  of 
Man,  and  is  a  good  example  of  a  rigorous  demonstration  that 
can  be  comprehended  by  the  layman.  He  said  in  1880,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  '  coming  of  age  of  the  Origin  of  Species  '  : 

Having  conceived  a  tender  affection  for  a  child  of  what  appeared 
to  me  to  be  of  remarkable  promise,  I  acted  for  some  time  in  the 


76  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

capacity  of  an  under-nurse,  and  thus  came  in  for  my  share  of  the 
storms  winch  threatened  even  the  very  life  of  the  young  creature. 
For  some  years  it  was  undoubtedly  Avarm  work.  ...  A  theory  is 
a  species  of  thinking,  and  its  right  to  exist  is  coextensive  with  its 
power  of  resisting  extinction  by  its  rivals. 

Huxley  wrote  thus  at  the  height  of  his  renown,  and  in  the 
press  of  his  full  and  laborious  life.  He  had,  meanwhile,  come 
to  deyote  himself  somewhat  less  to  original  inquiry,  and  more 
to  the  business  of  teaching,  lecturing,  and  disputation.  He 
was  a  great  professor,  and  had  in  a  high  degree  the  teacher's 
power  of  discovering  and  training  independent  minds,  as  well 
as  all  the  possible  gifts  of  a  popular  expounder.  He  plunged 
deep  into  affairs,  educational  and  administrative.  Much  of 
his  best  writing  was  produced  just  before  or  during  the 
Seventies,  and  is  found  in  the  bundles  of  articles  and  addresses 
entitled  Lay  Sermons  (1 870),  and  Critiques  and  Addresses  (1873), 
and  in  the  little  book  on  Hume  (1878).  Later  came  Science  and 
Culture  (1881),  and  Essays  on  some  Controverted  Questions  (1892). 
The  Romanes  Lecture  (1893)  on  Evolution  and  Ethics,  with  the 
Prolegomena  to  the  edition  of  1894,  contain  his  final  speculations. 
He  collected  his  Essays  in  nine  volumes  in  1893.  Despite  all 
the  obstacles  of  his  earlier  career — slow  recognition  and  a 
competence  long-deferred — and  through  the  endless  calls  and 
distractions  of  later  life,  Huxley's  wit  and  spirit  triumphed  to 
the  last.  He  managed,  as  he  had  vowed  in  youth,  to  '  leave  his 
mark  clear  and  distinct  '  ;  although,  as  he  said  to  Herbert 
Spencer,  he  cared  less  to  leave  his  mark  than  to  '  give  a  push.'  * 
He  certainly  left  it  not  only  on  the  mind  of  his  age,  but  on 
literature.  Some  of  his  letters  rank  among  his  best  writings, 
and  can  be  found  in  the  excellent  biography  by  his  son. 

His  conception  of  his  work  in  life  is  modestly  and  distinctly 
set  out  in  a  letter  of  1873  : 

The  part  I  have  to  play  is  not  to  found  a  new  school  of  thought 
or  to  reconcile  the  antagonisms  of  the  old  schools.  We  are  in  the 
midst  of  a  gigantic  movement  greater  than  that  which  preceded 
and  produced  the  Reformation,  and  really  only  the  continuation 
of  that  movement.  But  there  is  nothing  new  in  the  ideas  which 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  the  movement,  nor  is  any  reconcilement  possible 
between  free  thought  and  traditional  authority.  One  or  other 
will  have  to  succumb  after  a  struggle  of  unknown  duration  which 
will  have  as  side  issues  vast  political  and  social  troubles.  I  have 
no  more  doubt  that  free  thought  will  win  in  the  long  run  than  I 
have  that  I  sit  here  writing  to  you,  or  that  tins  free  thought  will 
organise  itself  into  a  coherent  system,  embracing  human  life  and  the 


HUXLEY  77 

world  as  one  harmonious  whole.  But  this  organisation  will  be  the 
work  of  generations  of  men,  and  those  who  further  it  most  will  be 
those  who  teach  men  to  rest  in  no  lie,  and  to  rest  in  no  verbal  de- 
lusions. I  may  be  able  to  help  a  little  in  this  direction — perhaps 
I  may  have  helped  already.     (Life,  i.  397.) 

Huxley's  expositions  and  polemics,  like  his  discoveries,  in 
the  field  of  exact  science,  exhibit  all  his  gifts  ;  but  they  have 
passed  into  the  general  stock  and  chronicle  of  knowledge. 
Here,  as  oarsmen  say,  he  pulled  his  weight  to  the  utmost,  and 
with  a  powerful  stroke,  and  he  remains  eminent.  His  contri- 
butions to  metaphysic  and  to  theological  discussion  are  equally 
clear-cut  ;  their  form  is  first-rate,  and  they  are  not  obsolete, 
even  for  those  who  may  doubt  if  they  achieved  their  object. 
Still  fresher  are  Huxley's  words  on  ethics,  on  education,  and  on 
life  at  large.  Wide  as  he  ranges,  his  work  is  bound  together 
not  merely  by  its  literary  worth,  but  by  a  certain  noble  unity 
of  mental  temper,  which  is  not  marred  either  by  some  incon- 
sistencies, or  rather  changes,  of  view,  or  by  the  atmosphere  of 
disputation  in  which  he  worked. 


His  philosophic  tenets  are  best  summarised  in  the  Hume, 
in  the  '  prologue  '  to  the  volume  of  Controverted  Questions,  and 
in  the  Romanes  Lecture.  The  Hume  is  a  manifesto  in  which 
Huxley,  ever  with  his  eye  on  the  adversary,  expounds  his  own 
solution  by  the  way  ;  '  here  and  there,' *as  he  confesses,  '  more 
is  seen  of  my  thread  than  of  Hume's  beads.'  Like  Mill  and  all 
the  votaries  of  '  experience,'  he  has  to  rest  the  validity  of  the 
law  of  causation,  which  is  assumed  as  obtaining  among  things, 
upon  something  within  the  mind  itself.  But  Hume,  the  great 
simplifier,  had  reduced  the  mind,  and  with  it  phenomena,  to  a 
series  of  sensations.  The  question  is  how  we  can  arrive,  on 
such  a  basis,  at  a  permanent  order  independent  of  ourselves. 
Huxley,  after  Berkeley  and  Hume,  inclines  to  the  idealist 
solution,  or  statement,  of  this  problem  ;  by  which  things 
themselves  are  reduced  to  something  mental.  He  thus  dis- 
claims any  sort  of  '  materialism  '  except  that  which  is  a  kind  of 
'  short-hand  idealism.'  The  situation  was  not  thus  to  be 
saved  ;  but  Huxley's  treatment  of  the  miraculous  received 
more  attention.  He  has  not,  like  Hume,  any  a  priori  objection 
to  the  miraculous  ;  the  question  for  him  is  only  one  of  evidence  ; 
he  asks  for  nothing  but  sufficient  proof,  though  it  is  pretty 
clear  that  he  does  not  expect  to  get  it.     This  attitude  he 


78  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

maintains  throughout  all  his  discussions  of  the  supernatural. 
'  I  have  always  had  a  certain  horror  of  presuming  to  set  a  limit- 
on  the  possibilities  of  things.'  In  this  spirit  he  coined  the 
term  '  agnostic  '  *  and  its  derivatives,  which  are  now  fixed  in  the 
language.  Huxley's  tone  fluctuates  in  some  degree  concerning 
the  highest  theorems  of  theology  ;  but  in  the  end  he  seems 
to  have  held  that  the  question  of  their  truth  or  falsehood  lies 
outside  the  limits  of  what  can  be  proved  or  disproved  ;  and 
therefore  that  he  could  have  none  of  them.  After  1885  he  set 
himself  to  pulverise  the  evidence  for  the  biblical-supernatural. 
The  creation,  the  flood,  and  the  miracle  (which  he  treated  as 
crucial)  of  the  destroyed  pigs  were  amongst  the  topics.  The 
last  of  these  incidents  occasioned  a  resounding  prize-fight  in 
the  magazines,  waged  between  Gladstone  and  Huxley,  conducted 
with  immense  relish  and  under  the  strictest  rules  of  the  ring. 
Huxley's  own  metaphor,  however,  for  the  procedure  was  the 
entomological  one  of  '  pinning-out  '  the  adversary.  He  also 
contended  with  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  with  Mr.  Lilly,  and  with 
many  others,  in  papers  that  are  still  excellent  reading  and 
classics  of  scientific  Boxiana. 

In  the  '  prologue  '  of  1894,  above  referred  to,  Huxley  sets 
forth  the  dozen  or  so  propositions  which  are  to  form  a  '  common 
body  of  established  truth,'  and  to  which  '  all  future  philosophical 
and  theological  speculations  will  have  to  accommodate  them- 
selves.' Together  with  the  Romanes  Lecture,  they  form  a  sort 
of  Credo  of  scientific  naturalism.  Huxley  finds  himself,  at 
last,  as  far  away  from  the  qualified  optimism  of  Spencer  as  he 
does  from  the  later  croakings  of  Carlyle.  Buoyant  and  brave 
in  temper,  he  nevertheless  ends  with  a  reasoned  but  very 
cautious  hopefulness.  The  race  may  possibly  advance,  while 
it  lasts,  but  it  will  do  so  slowly.  It  will  advance,  if  at  all,  in 
the  teeth  of  an  indifferent  or  unscrupulous  universe  outside  it. 
Huxley  writes  to  Leslie  Stephen  in  1 894  : 

You  are  charitable  enough  to  overlook  the  general  immorality  of 
the  cosmos  on  the  score  of  its  having  begotten  morality  in  one 
small  part  of  its  domain. 

He  sees  no  sign  that  the  '  cosmic  order  '  of  non-human,  or  at 
least  of  non-living,  nature  has  developed  in  the  interest,  Or 
even  as  though  in  the  interest,  of  human  happiness  and  virtue. 
At  any  rate  it  sets  a  wretched  example.  Earlier,  however,  he 
had  spoken  of  the  warning  '  slap  in  the  face  '  with  which 
'  nature '  visits  our  misbehaviour  before  executing  her  final 
sentence,  and  of  the  fixed  laws  under  which  such  punishment 


HUXLEY'S  CREED  79 

is  inflicted.  The  two  views  are  not  strictly  incongruous,  but 
Huxley  never  reconciled  them  in  form. 

His  views  on  the  traditional  theology  are  full  of  curious 
interest.  He  gave  it  all  up  ;  but  he  thought  that  it  contained 
more  ethical  truth  than  cheap  optimism  of  whatsoever  brand. 
He  was  led  to  this  position  by  reading  and  also  by  experience. 
As  a  boy  he  had  dived  into  Paley,  and  retained  a  taste  for 
theology ;  he  always  prized  the  Bible  and  advocated  its  use  in 
schools.1  In  youth  he  was  stirred  by  Carlyle,  to  whom  he 
traced  his  lifelong  abhorrence  of  imposture,  and  also  his  strain 
of  sympathy  with  the  poor,  which  is  of  a  less  sentimental 
cast  than  that  of-  Mill  and  other  radicals.  Carlyle 's  sterner 
Calvinistic  strain  also  struck  a  chord  in  Huxley,  chiming  in  as 
it  did  with  his  scientific  recognition  of  the  reign  of  law.  He 
had,  as  we  have  seen,  a  severe  sense  of  the  penal  regulations  of 
life.  He  is  not  like  Spencer,  who  always  speaks  as  if  Plato  had 
never  discoursed  of  the  two  steeds,  or  Paul  of  the  law  in  our 
members.  A  letter  written  to  Charles  Kingsley  in  1860,  '  in  a 
humour  of  savage  grief  '  on  the  occasion  of  a  bereavement, 
shows  that  he  did  not  win  his  faith  easily.  In  old  age,  when 
repudiating  any  sympathy  with  the  Comtists,  and  denying  at 
the  same  time  that  his  teaching  had  been  purely  '  negative,' 
he  describes  himself  as  one  who 

has  graduated  in  all  the  faculties  of  human  relationship  ;  who  has 
taken  his  share  in  all  the  deep  joys  and  deeper  anxieties  which  cling 
about  them  ;  who  has  felt  the  burden  of  young  lives  entrusted  to 
his  care,  and  has  stood  alone  with  his  dead  before  the  abyss  of  the 
eternal. 

It  is  this  '  graduation,'  this  note  of  conflict  and  reality,  that 
distinguishes  Huxley  from  many  philosophers. 

His  opinions  on  education  show  a  broader  spirit  than  either 
Matthew  Arnold's  or  Herbert  Spencer's.  There  is,  we  know, 
nothing  like  leather  ;  and  Huxley  naturally  pleads  for  a  regular 
training  in  science.  He  also  mocks  at  our  public  schools  and 
older  universities,  with  their  disdain  of  the  laboratory,  their 
class  superstitions,  and  their  Latin  elegances.  But  this  he  does 
in  the  interest  of  the  humanities  themselves.  In  the  dark  days 
which  many  yet  remember  (and  they  have  not  wholly  vanished), 
Huxley  advised  the  genuine  teaching  of  modern  history,  of 
foreign  tongues,  and  of  the  native  literature.  The  adult,  also, 
should  receive  no  narrow  culture,  but  should  be  conversant 
with  the  great  expounders,  both  Israelitish  and  Greek,  of  life' 
and  conduct  ;    not  to  name  the  wisdom  of  Goethe,2  whom 


80  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

Huxley  prized  highly,  and  whose  aphoristic  descant  on  Nature 
he  translated.  This  strong -headed  catholicity  of  view  is 
felt  even  in  Huxley's  addresses  on  technical  and  professional 
training. 

In  his  political  and  social  ideas  he  went  a  way  of  his  own.  In 
many  respects  he  was  anti-radical.  He  believed  much  more 
than  Mill  and  Mill's  followers  in  State  action,  or  at  least  in  the 
chance  of  a  bureaucracy  not  becoming  too  foolish.  He  became 
an  unionist  ;  perhaps  he  would  have  been  more  of  a  liberal  if 
Mr.  Gladstone,  whom  he  cordially  distrusted,  had  never  been 
born.  But,  in  the  great  test  case  of  Governor  Eyre  x  (1866) 
which  brought  out  the  sharpest  of  cleavages  amongst  English 
thinkers,  Huxley  sided  with  Mill,  Spencer,  Darwin,  and  Gold  win 
Smith,  and  against  Tennyson,  Ruskin.  and  Carlyle.  He 
thought  that  Eyre,  whatever  his  intentions,  had  committed 
legal  murder.  Yet  Huxley  had  unhopeful  views  of  the  negro,2 
and  was  no  democrat .  One  of  his  papers  is  entitled  The  Natural 
Inequality  of  Men  (1890).  On  such  matters — for  instance  on 
the  '  emancipation  of  women,'  for  whom  he  claimed  a  fair 
field  but  no  favour — his  attitude  may  be  described  as  liberalism 
controlled  by  anthropology. 

VI 

Huxley,  as  a  writer,  is  a  vigorous  slip  of  the  fighting,  ex- 
pounding eighteenth-century  stock.  He  has  no  tricks.  Rather 
vociferous  and  rhetorical  at  first,  he  settles  down  into  an  easy, 
manly,  pure  elocution,  which  is  mostly  argumentative,  often 
sardonic,  again  and  again  truly  eloquent,  but  which  never 
loses  the  tone  of  reasonableness.  It  is  like  a  speech  made  in 
court  by  an  honest  advocate — before  the  court  of  science, 
where  any  amount  of  banter  or  icy  politeness,  without  vulgarity, 
is  allowable.  He  does  not  lose  himself  in  refinements  ;  if  he 
has  a  fault,  it  is  that  he  sheers  all  too  buoyantly  through  them. 
Since  his  time  there  has  been  no  such  disputant  among  men  of 
letters  in  this  country.  But  a  fighting  style  is  the  most  transient 
of  all,  and  no  doubt  Huxley  has  suffered  from  his  very  victories, 
and  from  the  shifting  of  the  issues  for  which  he  strove.  In  the 
literary  struggle  for  life  mere  militancy  is  a  clog  unless  it  is 
vitalised  by  a  great  theme,  a  strong  mind,  a  desire  for  the  truth, 
and  the  gift  of  form.  Huxley's  work  is  often  thus  preserved. 
There  is  no  English  Bossuet.  Newman  is  famous  in  con- 
troversy ;  but  Huxley,  like  many  a  reader,  could  truly  say  of 
Newman  what  no  one  can  reasonably  say  of  Huxley  :  '  After 


HUXLEY  AS  A  WRITER  81 

an  hour  or  two  of  hiin  I  began  to  lose  sight  of  the  distinction 
between  truth  and  falsehood.' 

Still,  Huxley's  style  is  not  essentially  combative  in  its  higher, 
or  in  all  its  ordinary,  forms.  He  is  a  teacher,  knowing  the 
pace  at  which  an  audience  can  take  things  in.  The  discourses 
On  a  Piece  of  Chalk  and  On  the  Method  of  Zadig  are  exemplary, 
and  would  have  pleased  Buffon.  The  address  on  Priestley  is 
the  model  of  a  scientific  causerie.  The  paper  On  the  Hypothesis 
that  Animals  are  Automata  (the  paradox  of  Descartes)  is  a  skilful 
union  of  history,  argument,  and  demonstration  :  the  manner 
is  dignified  without  being  slow,  and  exact  while  not  too  tech- 
nical. The  Prolegomena  (1894)  to  Evolution  and  Ethics  are  the 
work  of  a  past  master  of  reasoned  statement ;  they  are  simple 
in  diction  and  brilliantly  arranged. 

Huxley  admired  Tennyson's  precise  and  poetical  treatment 
of  science  ;  and  in  his  own  science  there  is  a  strong  vein  of 
poetry,  which  comes  out  best  when  he  is  disowning  the  opinion 
that  science  can  explain  everything.  The  passage  is  familiar, 
but  may  be  quoted  once  more,  as  it  is  worthy  of  any  philo- 
sophical humourist  : 

I  do  not  wish  to  crow  unduly  over  my  humble  cousin  the  orang,1 
but  in  the  aesthetic  province,  as  in  that  of  the  intellect,  I  am  afraid 
he  is  nowhere.  I  doubt  not  he  would  detect  a  fruit  amidst  a 
wilderness  of  leaves  where  I  could  see  nothing  ;  but  I  am  tolerably 
confident  that  he  has  never  been  awestruck,  as  I  have  been,  by 
the  dim  religious  gloom,  as  of  a  temple  devoted  to  the  earth-gods, 
of  the  tropical  forest  which  he  inhabits.  Yet  I  doubt  not  that 
our  poor  long-armed  and  short-legged  friend,  as  he  sits  meditatively 
munching  his  durian  fruit,  has  something  behind  that  sad  Socratic 
face  of  his  which  is  utterly  '  beyond  the  bounds  of  physical  science.' 
Physical  science  may  know  all  about  his  clutching  the  fruit  and 
munching  it  and  digesting  it,  and  how  the  physical  titillation  of  his 
palate  is  transmitted  to  some  microscopic  cells  of  the  grey  matter 
of  his  brain.  But  the  feelings  of  sweetness  and  of  satisfaction 
which,  for  a  moment,  hang  out  their  signal  fights  in  his  melancholy 
eyes  are  as  utterly  outside  the  bounds  of  physics  as  is  the  '  fine 
frenzy  '  of  a  human  rhapsodist. 

Darwin  said,  '  What  splendid  fun  Huxley  is  ' ;  and  so  he  is  still. 
Of  the  geologist  Hutton  he  observes  that, 

like  most  philosophers  of  his  age,  he  coquetted  with  those  final 
causes  which  have  been  named  barren  virgins,  but  which  might  be 
more  fitly  termed  the  hetairce  of  philosophy,  so  constantly  have  they 
led  men  astray. 

His  pages  are  full  of  such  things  ;    they  are  not  forced  or 

VOL.  I.  F 


82  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

thought  painfully  out,  but  spring  up  as  if  in  talk.  His  letters 
to  his  friends  and  family  have  the  same  spontaneity.  He  can 
write  excellent  nonsense  about  a  cat,  or  about  his  own  Privy 
Councillorship.  His  gallant  good  spirits,  resting  on  and 
surviving  the  conviction  that  the  universe  is  a  grim  affair, 
come  out  to  the  end,  especially  when  there  is  fighting  to 
be  done.  Huxley,  certainly,  is  an  artist  in  his  many-sided 
business  of  explaining,  refuting,  and  deriding  ;  but  amongst 
our  scientific  writers  he  stands  out,  above  all,  for  humanity 
and  imagination. 

William  Kingdon  Clifford1  (1845-79),  a  mathematician  of 
note,  and  perhaps  also  the  Marcellus  of  philosophy,  left  only 
his  book  called  The  Common  Sense  of  the  Exact  Sciences  (1885) 
and  a  handful  of  speculative  papers.  He  writes  with  brilliant 
simplicity,  and  sketches  his  conception  of  '  mind-stuff,'  which 
implies  some  incredibly  far-back  embryo  of  mind  latent  even 
in  the  inorganic  world  ;  the  aim  being,  naturally,  to  turn  the 
flank  of  the  question, — At  what  point  does  life  emerge  in  the 
eternal  process  ?  Clifford  also  dreams  of  a  creed,  secular  and 
scientific  in  foundation,  but  idealistic  in  effect,  which  shall 
extend  our  sympathies  beyond  humanity  itself.  He  borrows, 
it  is  said  from  Henry  Sidgwick,  the  term  '  cosmic  emotion  '  ; 
and,  writing  in  the  Seventies,  fervently  quotes  Swinburne,  the 
'  singer  before  sunrise  ' ;  and  rejoices  in  the  spirit  of  Hertha. 

A  kindred  enthusiasm  is  also  seen  in  the  physicist,  John 
Tyndall  (1820-93),  whose  Heat  as  a  Mode  of  Motion  (1863)  and 
other  works  proved  him  to  be,  along  with  Huxley,  the  most 
expert  and  eloquent  populariser  of  his  time.  Tyndall's  address 
at  Belfast  to  the  British  Association  in  1874  was  saluted  as  a 
sonorous  statement  of  the  new  materialism  ;  it  really  points  to 
a  kind  of  mystical  dualism,  denying  that  '  logical  continuity 
can  be  established  between  molecular  processes  and  the  pheno- 
mena of  consciousness  '  ;  and  it  is  a  plea,  founded  on  an 
historical  review,  for  freedom  of  scientific  inquiry.  Tyndall 
was  influenced  by  his  friend  and  master  Carlyle,  on  whom  he 
wrote  well ;  he  is  full  of  poetic  and  pictorial  feeling,  which 
finds  no  very  restrained  expression  in  his  style,  and  which  is  well 
seen  in  his  essays,  his  Fragments  of  Science  (1871),  and  his  New 
Fragments  (1892),  and  in  his  works  on  glaciers  and  mountain- 
eering. Inferior  to  Huxley  as  a  thinker  and  writer,  Tyndall  is  a 
clean  hitter,  and  his  language  has  a  compensating  touch  of 
colour  which  is  not  yet  faded. 


A  LAY  CREED  83 

VII 

Thus  many  of  the  apostles  of  experience  and  utility,  of 
science  and  evolution,  proffered  not  only  a  philosophy,  but  some 
kind  of  natural  religion  or  working  faith,  denuded  of  the  super- 
natural. So,  in  another  way,  did  the  Comtists,  or  those  who 
without  being  Comtists  inhaled  their  spirit.  But  the  men  of 
science  are  often  hostile  to  Positivism  ;  nor  have  they,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  any  formal  cult  in  common  ;  but  each  goes 
his  own  way,  while  in  accord  with  the  others  on  many  funda- 
mentals. This  heroic  effort  to  beat  out  a  lay  creed  will  always 
signalise  the  second  half  of  the  century  in  English  history. 
Its  manifestations  in  letters  are  not  easy  to  fix,  but  they  abound. 
In  the  stories  of  George  Eliot,  in  the  verse  of  Swinburne,  in 
that  of  James  Thomson,  there  is  a  conscious  rejection  of  the 
old  doctrines  and  a  resolution  to  make  what  can  be  made  of 
life  without  them.  But  a  deeply  secular  tinge,  without  any 
strife  or  crying,  also  comes  over  inventive  literature  at  large,  and 
is  seen  in  the  novel,  in  poetry,  in  fantasy,  and  in  criticism  ; 
servat  odorem.  To  come,  outside  the  sphere  of  controversy, 
on  a  writer  like  Christina  Rossetti,  of  truly  conservative  faith 
and  principles,  who  is  also  an  artist,  is  exceptional.  The 
purely  intellectual  movement  told,  not,  so  much  by  direct 
attack  as  by  silently  loosening  the  ancient  anchorage,  at  least 
for  the  time. 

Within  philosophy  itself,  a  new  phase  opens  during  the 
seventh  and  eighth  decades.  Naturally,  the  battle-ground 
becomes  more  and  more  that  of  morals,  and  of  the  ethical 
sanction.  For  the  new  creeds  were  on  their  mettle  to  show 
that  the  basis  and  inspiration  of  conduct  were  not  lost  with 
the  old  dogmas.  They  might  own  their  debt  freely  to  the 
historic  faiths,  and  professed  to  have  cleared  them  of  un- 
scientific accretions.  Such  a  challenge  explains  the  temper  of 
writers  like  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  whose  Agnostic's  Apology  (1893) 
is  still  the  most  powerful,  and  indeed  poignant,  expression  of 
it  ;  the  Essays  on  Freethinking  and  Plain  Speaking,  twenty 
years  earlier,  are  also  of  mark.  Unlike  Spencer,  Stephen  was 
well  qualified  on  the  historical  side,  and  produced  in  1876  his 
deeply-informed  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  which  explores  the  byways  and  main  roads  of  specula- 
tion. His  Science  of  Ethics  (1882)  is  much  beholden  to  Spencer, 
but  is  less  ambitiously  deductive  in  character  ;  he  starts  with 
the  accepted  moral  code  in  its  better  shape,  and  seeks  to 
interpret  that  code  in  the  light  of  evolution,  in  a  manner 


84  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

which  was  naturally  challenged  by  conservative  thinkers.1  He 
was,  however,  first  of  all  a  man  of  letters  and  critic  (see  Ch.  xi.). 
A  somewhat  different  lay  religion  was  sketched  by  the  Positivist , 
James  Cotter  Morison,  whose  Service  of  Man  (1887)  is  a  typical 
piece  of  polemic  and  of  hasty  reconstruction,  with  the  note  of 
passion  that  marks  the  time.  Cotter  Morison  is  much  happier 
in  his  short  volumes  upon  Gibbon  and  Macaulay. 

Two  other  scions  of  the  school  of  experience,  Henry  Sidgwick  2 
(1838-1900)  and  Shadworth  Hollway  Hodgson  (1832-1912), 
are  more  dissident  from  its  tradition,  and  in  pure  philosophy 
are  more  original,  than  Stephen.  Sidgwick,  while  deeply  at- 
tentive to  literature,  is  primarily  a  close  hard  thinker,  chary  of 
the  graces.  Much  of  his  work  dates  from  the  Nineties,  and 
some  was  posthumously  published  ;  his  books  on  economic 
and  political  science  are  of  high  value  (Elements  of  Politics, 
1891)  ;  but  he  is  best  known  by  his  Methods  of  Ethics,  published 
in  1874  and  frequently  revised.  It  is  a  tribute  to  this  long, 
toughly -written  work,  and  also  to  the  spreading  interest  in 
philosophy,  that  six  editions  of  it  were  demanded  in  twenty- 
seven  years.  In  a  complex  argument,  Sidgwick  turns  round 
on  the  utilitarian  scheme  of  morals  and  gives  it  a  disconcerting 
wrench.  He  seeks,  in  the  first  place,  to  restore  the  absolute 
character  of  one  intuition,  which  the  school  of  '  experience  '  had 
obscured  or  explained  away.  It  is  that  of  duty,  or  absolutely 
rational  conduct,  regarded  as  binding  in  its  essence.  Sidgwick 
analyses  this  idea,  and  also,  in  his  most  Aristotelian  chapters, 
the  '  morality  of  common  sense  '  ;  and  from  both  of  them,  and 
from  what  is  left  of  the  utilitarian  creed,  works  up  to  his  own 
conclusion.  During  the  process,  the  deep  fissure  in  that  creed 
comes  into  light — the  fissure  between  '  egoism,'  which  starts 
with  the  happiness,  more  or  less  intelligently  conceived,  of 
you  or  me,  and  '  universalism  '  or  '  altruism,'  which  starts 
with  the  happiness  of  others.  Sidgwick's  point  is  that  no 
sophistry  can  ever  make  these  wholly  coincide,  or  can  answer 
the  question  '  Why  should  I  seek  the  happiness  of  others  more 
than  my  nature  inclines  me  to  do  ?  ' — Nothing  can  do  this 
except  '  a  hypothesis,  un verifiable  by  experience,  reconciling 
the  Individual  with  the  Universal  Reason.'  Failing  which, 
'  the  Cosmos  of  Duty  is  thus  really  reduced  to  a  Chaos,'  and  the 
hope  of  a  rational  ethic  is  foredoomed. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Sidgwick  to  be  haunted  by  the 
question  and  to  end  with  the  hypothetical  answer.  The  Data 
of  Ethics  did  not  appear  till  1879  ;  nor,  from  the  other  camp, 
Green's  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  till  1883.     Sidgwick  criticised 


HENRY  SIDGWICK— SHADWORTH  HODGSON    85 

both  these  works  with  much  dialectical  and  judicial  power,  but 
did  not  visibly  change  his  point  of  view.  In  a  purely  natural- 
istic universe  he  saw  an  unfillable  hole — no  sufficient  motive 
for  doing  what  you  know  you  ought  to  do.  He  could  not 
be  expected  to  see  that  the  most  promising  answer  to  the 
difficulty  was  offered  by  a  life  and  temper  like  his  own,  which 
was  markedly  disinterested  and  exalted,  and  by  what  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen  calls  his  '  hopefulness  not  damped  by  provisional 
scepticism.'  In  some  ways,  like  Stuart  Mill,  he  provides  a 
pattern  for  the  '  conduct  of  the  understanding.'  His  acute, 
honest,  minutely -balancing  mind  is  ever  on  the  alert  against 
believing  merely  because  it  would  give  anything  to  be  able  to 
believe.  '  How  I  sympathise,'  he  once  exclaims,  '  with  Kant ! 
with  his  passionate  yearning  for  synthesis,  and  condemned  by 
his  reason  to  criticism  !  '  In  his  published  letters,  with  their 
fervent  musings  on  duty,  immortality,  and  happiness,  and  their 
comments  on  In  Memoriam  and  on  George  Eliot,  we  seem  to 
touch  the  very  pulse  of  the  Victorian  age,  in  which  Sidgwick 
was  formed  ;  with  its  special  questionings,  its  disquieted,  high- 
strained  '  nobleness.'  Sidgwick  was  a  powerful  and  effectual 
champion  of  liberal  education,  for  women  equally  with  men, 
and  won  great  influence,  especially  at  Cambridge  where  he 
spent  his  days.  His  style  grew  more  flexible  and  easier,  but 
offers  few  bribes  to  those  who  require  them  ;  it  is  full  of 
doublings -back,  qualified  qualifications,  and  densely-crowded 
sentences  ;  but  it  holds  the  mind,  and  leaves  an  impression  of 
caution  rather  than  of  scepticism.  A  little  more  form,  or 
concession  to  form,  and  Sidgwick  doubtless  would  have  reached 
the  laity  more  than  he  did. 

Shadworth  Hollway  Hodgson's  difficult  and  subtle  work  on 
Time  and  Space  (1865)  was  succeeded  by  his  Theory  of  Practice 
in  1870,  and  in  1878  by  The  Philosophy  of  Reflection  ;  his  elabor- 
ate Metaphysic  of  Experience,  which  gives  his  maturest  thought, 
did  not  come  out  till  1898,  so  that  he  is  hardly  within  our  limits. 
He  may  be  said  to  attempt  a  restatement  of  the  ethical  pro- 
blem, by  sinking  a  shaft  down  to  the  bedrock  that  is  common 
to  the  opposing  camps.  Hodgson's  analysis  of  the  passions 
and  virtues,  while  abstruse,  shows  great  conversance  with  life  : 
he  does  not,  like  many  moral  philosophers,  work  at  six  removes 
from  reality,  or  simply  methodise  platitudes.  There  is  a 
warmth  of  direct  observation  in  his  pictures  of  veracity,  envy, 
or  love  ;  for  the  barren  antipodes  to  his  pages  (in  Theory  of 
Practice)  on  Eros  and  Anteros,  we  may  turn  to  Bain's  account 
of  the  tender  feelings  in  The  Emotions  and  the  Will.     Hodgson 


86  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

also  describes  the  aesthetic x  feelings  from  within  ;  his  dis- 
tinction between  fancy  and  imagination,  and  his  accounts 
of  style,  of  rhythm,  and  the  species  of  poetry  have  been  much 
too  little  noticed.  He  inlays  bits  of  Greek  and  other  quotations 
in  his  nice  and  fastidious  style,  the  exactness  of  which  suggests 
a  close  reading  of  Aristotle. 


VIII 

But  to  return  to  the  philosophers  of  the  '  right  wing  '  who 
succeeded  Ferrier  and  Mansel,  and  who  were  all  this  time  at 
work  countermining  the  new  naturalism.  After  1860  they 
drew  new  weapons  from  Hegel,  who  had  died  in  1831,  but  who 
for  long  was  most  imperfectly  known  in  England  ;  and  there 
came  also  a  notable  revival  of  Kant.  The  empirical  writers 
had  to  face  the  attack  in  their  fortresses  of  logic,  psychology, 
ethics,  and  political  science  ;  but  the  citadel  was  metaphysic. 
They  were  to  be  told  that  they  could  not  get  on  without  it  ; 
that  they  had  a  metaphysic  already,  but  a  bad  one  ;  and  that 
if  they  went  to  the  Germans  they  would  find  salvation  or 
remission.  This  movement,  at  once  offensive  and  reconstruc- 
tive, culminated  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century.  It  belongs 
to  the  history  of  mind  more  than  to  letters,  all  the  more  that 
many  of  its  champions  were  not  good  or  not  easy  writers, 
and  spoke  to  an  academic  or  elect  audience,  not  to  the  general 
public.  Their  veteran,  however,  James  Hutchison  Stirling 
(1820-1909)  has  an  eccentric  eloquence,  sometimes  coloured 
by  reminiscence  of  Carlyle  ;  who  bore  witness,  though  himself 
now  impervious  to  metaphysics,  to  the  valiant  service  done  by 
Stirling  against  the  empirics  of  the  age.  The  Secret  of  Hegel 
(1865)  is  an  effort  to  translate,  and  to  expound  in  plain  English, 
the  wickedly  technical  '  dialectic  '  of  the  master.  In  this  task 
Stirling  shows  great  and  rampant  ability.  He  breathes  with 
ease,  and  can  only  breathe,  in  that  strange  heady  atmosphere, 
which  seems  to  seal  the  ears  of  the  devotee  to  the  conceivability 
of  any  other  point  of  view.  Stirling's  work  as  a  pioneer  and 
acclimatiser  was  always  recognised  by  his  successors.  In  1874 
The  Logic  of  Hegel  was  translated  and  commented  by  William 
Wallace,  later  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  at  Oxford,  who  was 
a  skilled  interpreter  of  German  thinkers  (including  Schopen- 
hauer), and  who  wrote  with  elaborate  finish  and  much  power  of 
clarification.  The  quickening  power  of  Hegel  on  an  unsyste- 
matic mind  is  well  seen  in  the  earlier  career  of  Benjamin  Jowett. 
In  1876  came  the  Ethical  Studies  of  Francis  Herbert  Bradley, 


T.  H.  GREEN— THE  CAIRDS  87 

who  was  to  be  the  most  original  philosopher  and  philosophical 
writer  in  Britain  during  the  next  generation  ;  and,  in  1879, 
The  Philosophy  of  Kant,  by  Robert  Adamson,  another  inde- 
pendent thinker,  with  a  consummate  knowledge  of  the  history 
of  thought  ;  his  Fickle  (1881)  also  exemplifies  his  powers. 
But  these  two  writers  use  the  Germans  rather  than  depend  on 
them,  and  inaugurate  a  new  '  moment  '  in  our  philosophy. 
Green  and  the  two  Cairds,  on  the  other  hand,  though  no  mere 
importers,  devote  themselves  in  great  measure  to  representing 
and  adapting  Hegelian  or  Kantian  conceptions. 

It  was  a  pity  that  so  strong  and  serious  a  spirit  as  Thomas 
Hill  Green  (1836-82)  should  have  stooped  so  seldom  to  the 
common  idiom  of  literature.  In  1874-5  he  published,  along 
with  T.  H.  Grose,  an  edition  of  Hume's  Treatise  on  Human 
Nature,  with  a  long,  dense,  unreadable  and  hostile  introduc- 
tion, showing  great  dialectical  skill  and  pertinacity.  It  sent 
many  an  unregenerate  student  to  Hume  for  mere  relief. 
Huxley's  work  on  that  thinker,  which  appeared  a  few  years 
afterwards,  and  Green's,  belong  to  different  worlds,  and  it  is 
hard  to  bring  them  into  any  sort  of  contact  ;  but  there  is  no 
doubt  which  of  the  two  men  is  the  writer,  and  which  the  meta- 
physician. Green's  aim  was  to  cut  empiricism  at  the  very 
root  ;  and  Hume's  tree,  in  the  Treatise,  is  naked  and  distinct 
enough,  without  any  of  the  foliage  of  the  Essays.  Of  Green  it 
has  been  well  said  that 

he  appealed  x  to  '  Englishmen  under  five-and-twenty  '  to  close  their 
Mill  and  Spencer  and  to  open  their  Kant  and  Hegel ;  and  this 
appeal  marks  an  epoch  in  English  thought  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

Green's  major  work,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  (1883),  is  far  less 
forbidding  in  form,  though  still  very  close-grained  ;  it  is  also 
less  purety  critical.  It  is  an  impressive  deliverance  of  the 
'philosophy  of  spirit' — of  a  fresh,  thorough -going,  and  lofty 
idealism.  But  he  writes  somewhat  as  though  his  system  had 
all  the  loftiness  to  itself  ;  and  on  his  showing  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  explain  the  ethical  afflatus  that  is  strong  in  the  writers  whom 
he  judges  to  be  steeped  in  error,  and  in  the  votaries  of 
'  humanity,'  who  abandon  the  sacred  wells  of  metaphysic. 
The  same  sincerity  and  no  less  weight  are  evident  in  Green's 
later  and  scattered  writings  on  social  and  political  science. 
He  was  a  power  in  Oxford,  and  beyond  ;  but  his  influence  was 
checked,  much  more  than  Henry  Sidgwick's,  by  his  anti-popular 
form. 

This  defect  is  less  apparent  in  the  writings  of  the  brothers, 


88  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

John  and  Edward  Caird.  John  Caird  (1820-98)  is  more  of  a 
divine,  Edward  (1835-1908)  more  of  a  philosopher  ;  but  they 
have  much  ground  in  common.  In  his  Introduction  to  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  (1880)  John  Caird  eloquently  assails, 
on  Hegelian  lines,  the  scientific  '  materialism  '  of  Huxley,  and 
the  Spencerian  cult  of  the  Unknowable.  He -tells  the  religious 
world  not  to  be  afraid  lest  the  conception  of  development 
should  force  them  to  admit  that  Christianity  is  merely 
'  elaborated  out  of  pre-Christian  religions  and  philosophies, 
any  more  than  that  life  can  be  elaborated  out  of  inorganic 
matter  '  :  a  sentence  which  well  indicates  Caird's  position.  It 
does  not  follow,  he  says,  that  Christianity  is  not  '  a  religion  of 
divine  or  supernatural  origin.'  The  whole  book  is  in  the  nature 
of  an  insurance  offered  by  metaphysics  to  liberal  orthodoxy. 
Edward  Caird,  the  younger  brother,  was  professor  at  Glasgow 
from  1866  to  1893,  and  afterwards  Master  of  Balliol.  Much 
of  his  work,  published  in  his  later  life,  embodies  the  teachings 
of  a  quarter  of  a  century  ;  and  perhaps  only  Carlyle  had  a 
stronger  influence  in  Scotland.  His  short  books  on  Kant 
(1877)  and  on  Hegel  (1893)  show  great  expository  skill  ;  and 
in  other  works  Caird  reviews  the  progress  of  religion  from  the 
idealistic  point  of  view.  He  is  a  smooth  dignified  writer,  with 
a  marked  gift  for  comprehensive  and  sweeping  surveys,  and 
his  tone  is  exalted  and  sincere.  But  for  those  who  are  not 
already  converts  Caird  is  a  most  elusive  thinker,  moving  from 
abstraction  to  abstraction  so  that  the  reader  loses  foothold. 
That  may  be  the  case  with  Hegel  too  ;  but  in  Hegel  we  come 
on  lumps  of  monumental  granite  upon  which  to  stay  our  steps. 
Edward  Caird's  outlook  on  literature  is  also  a  wide  one,  as  his 
articles  on  Carlyle  and  Goethe  testify.  He  naturally  cares 
most  for  the  ideas  and  creeds  that  are  to  be  extracted  from  the 
poets  and  visionaries. 

The  revulsion  from  the  school  of  experience  takes  yet  another 
form  in  James  Martineau  (1805-1900),  long  the  leader  of  thought 
and  letters  in  the  Unitarian  community.  Martineau  was  much 
more  of  a  divine  than  of  an  original  philosopher,  though  he 
wrote  profusely  and  keenly  on  philosophical  matters  ;  and  he 
was  greater  as  a  preacher,  and  as  a  personal  and  spiritual  force, 
than  as  a  theologian.  His  activity  was  prolonged  and  wonderful. 
He  began  to  write  in  1836  ;  but  his  most  elaborate  and  massive 
books  were  not  published  until  he  had  reached  his  vigorous 
eightieth  year  ;  Types  of  Ethical  Theory  (1885)  and  A  Study  of 
Religion  (1888)  being,  with  the  Study  of  Spinoza  (1882),  the 
most  important.     The  best  work  of  his  earlier  life  he  collected 


JAMES  MARTINEAU— CAMPBELL  FRASER  89 

in  four  volumes  of  Essays,  Reviews,  and  Addresses  (1890-1). 
Brought  up  in  a  rigid  form  of  empiricism,  Martineau  broke 
away  early,  and  his  philosophical  vita  nuova  began  in  Berlin, 
where  he  studied  Kant  and  Hegel.  In  the  end  he  elaborated 
a  theistic  doctrine  profoundly  ethical  in  its  complexion,  opposing 
alike  the  Utilitarians  and  Mansel,  and  ranging  over  almost 
every  current  controversy.  Martineau's  lofty  temper,  like  his 
keen  dialectical  power,  can  be  felt  in  all  he  writes,  and  his 
rhetoric  is  not  empty.  It  is,  however,  diffuse  and  ornate,  and 
his  genuine  faculty  for  writing  was  somewhat  dispersed  and  lost. 
How  well  he  could  describe  when  he  chose  can  be  seen  from  his 
account  of  the  person  and  character  of  Charles  Kingsley.  But 
he  figures  more  in  the  history  of  religious  thought  and  feeling 
than  in  that  of  letters.  Yet  a  last  representative  of  idealism 
may  be  named,  Alexander  Campbell  Fraser  (1818-1914), 
another  of  the  Scottish  Guards,  and  long  a  professor  of  veteran 
rank  at  Edinburgh.  To  write  of  Berkeley  is  to  be  near  the  rose 
of  literature  ;  and  Fraser's  commented  edition  (1871)  of  the 
noblest  writer  amongst  English  thinkers,  who  made  philosophy 
musical  and  Apolline,  was  a  timely  reminder  of  the  powers  of  our 
language  in  the  age  of  Herbert  Spencer. 

IX 

For  there  was  no  Berkeley  during  all  this  period,  nor  yet  a 
Hume,  nor  a  Hobbes.  Despite  the  powers  of  Mansel  and 
Ferrier,  of  Mill  and  Huxley,  none  of  them  quite  rose  to  the 
immense  intellectual  occasion.  There  was  an  atmosphere  of 
combat  only  to  be  paralleled  in  Berkeley's  own  day.  The 
style  of  philosophy  and  science  is  affected  by  this  medium, 
as  well  as  by  the  new  ideas  which  clamoured  for  expression. 
It  is  apt  to  be  the  language  of  the  streets,  or  else  of  the 
laboratory  or  the  schools.  The  technicalities  of  science 
lumber  it  ;  and  the  forms  of  the  review  article,  the  rejoinder- 
pamphlet,  the  public  lecture,  the  lay  sermon,  the  open 
letter,  and  the  occasional  oration,  all  make  for  a  journalism 
which  may  not  be  ignoble  but  is  not  enduring.  These 
forms  multiply  greatly,  and  the  salvage  for  literature  is  not 
encouraging.  But  we  have  had  to  note  some  true  prac- 
titioners of  that  '  close,  naked,  natural  way  of  speaking  '  which 
is  the  voice  of  science.  Darwin  wrote  as  calmly  as  Aristotle, 
and  as  well,  while  the  fighting  prose  was  being  whetted 
and  edged  all  around  him.  Tribute  has  already  been  paid  to 
other  writers  ;   and  I  shall  but  cite  some  stray  new  words  and 


90  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

phrases  of  learned  origin  that  now  stole  into  the  language,  or 
acquired  new  senses,  as  a  result  of  the  movement  of  ideas. 

Greek,  the  mother-language  of  thought,  and  Latin  in  a  less 
degree,  were  once  again  drawn  upon.  Endless  neologisms 
appeared  in  the  special  sciences,  which  themselves,  like  anthro- 
pology, got  new  names  as  they  arose.  The  popular  spread  of 
such  words  and  phrases  is  a  very  rude  index  of  general  culture . 
How  many  who  speak  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  or  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  understand  the  true  sense  of  such  phrases  ? 
We  can  at  least  apply  them  (the  first  is  fathered  on  Darwin  and 
the  second  on  Wallace)  to  the  fortunes  of  the  vocabulary  itself. 
Words  appeared  that  have  dwindled  or  died,  not  '  of  their  own 
dear  loveliness,'  but  because  they  were  not  wanted  ;  or  have 
survived  painfully  in  professional  circles .  So  with  metempirical, 
suggested  by  Lewes  ;  and  with  eject,  formed  by  Clifford  on  the 
pattern  of  subject  and  object,  to  denote  our  consciousness,  which 
is  for  ever  indirect,  of  minds  other  than  our  own.  Other  terms, 
like  Hamilton's  cosmothetic,  and  John  Grote's  felicific  (not  a 
word  itself  that  makes  for  happiness)  are  similarly  interned. 
The  appearance  of  subjective  and  objective  is  noticed  by  Edward 
FitzGerald  in  1840-1 ,  in  a  spirit  of  regret .  The  former,  he  says, 
'  has  made  considerable  progress  in  England  ...  so  that  people 
begin  to  fancy  they  understand  what  it  means  '  ;  and  in  the 
same  strain  he  mentions  exegetical  and  cesthetics.  All  these  have 
held  their  ground  in  the  semi-learned  language.  Psychology, 
which  was  earlier  domesticated,  has  passed  into  working  English; 
and  also,  in  the  sense  of  character  or  play  of  motive,  into  the 
slang  of  the  press.  We  are  told  to  '  understand  the  ex-Kaiser's 
psychology,'  as  though  he  were  a  Hume  or  a  Lotze.  One  of 
Comte's  inventions,  altruism  and  its  derivatives,  came  in 
through  his  translators  and  expositors,  and  is  still  in  use,  even 
outside  works  on  ethics,  amongst  formal  speakers.  Egoism 
and  egoist,  already  in  existence  (egoism  as  far  back  as  1800,  in 
its  modern  sense),  were  captured  by  the  schools  to  express  a 
particular  theory  of  morals.  They  are  used  in  a  hostile,  or  at 
best  in  a  neutral,  sense  ;  and  they  escape  into  fiction  and  into 
common  parlance.  Meredith's  tale  The  Egoist  was  published 
in  the  same  year  (1879)  as  Data  of  Ethics,  where  the  word 
figures  largely.  Ethology  was  coined  by  the  younger  Mill  to 
denote  the  science  of  human  character,  and  it  might  have  lived 
had  such  a  science  really  existed.  It  occurs  in  the  Logic, 
which  also  promoted  the  circulation  of  the  words  connote  and 
connotation.  These  are  well  enough  in  their  place  ;  they  are 
heard,  in  donnish  circles,  instead  of  imply  and  implication. 


NEOLOGISMS  91 

The  new  religions  or  no -religions  did  not  want  for  titles. 
Hedonism  and  hedonist  are  now  established  words  :  the  latter  is 
said  to  be  the  invention  of  Christopher  North.  The  New  English 
Dictionary  quotes  first  De  Quincey,  in  1856  ('  I  am  a  Hedonist  ; 
and  if  you  must  know  why  I  take  opium,  that  's  the  reason 
why  '),  and  next  Pater,  in  1876.  He  said  :  '  I  wish  they 
wouldn't  call  me  a  Hedonist  ;  it  produces  such  a  bad  effect  on 
the  mind  of  people  who  don't  know  Greek.'  Indeed  moralists' 
Greek,  when  it  migrates  into  English,  can  sometimes  produce 
as  bad  an  effect  as  thieves'  Latin.  Again,  the  epithet  cosmic 
had  its  day.  A  '  cosmic  philosophy  '  was  evolved  in  America 
in  1874  ;  the  '  cosmic  emotion,'  which  so  few  can  feel,  was 
recommended  by  -Clifford  ;  and  the  'cosmic  process'  was, 
we  have  seen,  censured  on  high  moral  grounds  (in  1893)  by 
Huxley.  The  words  agnostic  and  agnosticism  were  hatched  in 
the  Metaphysical  Society,  and  are  now  found  in  census  returns, 
and  also  (profanely  clipped)  in  undergraduate  slang.  Secular- 
ism, secularist,  are  in  use,  but  they  still  have  a  raw,  dogmatic, 
outlaw  air.  Many  of  the  new  words,  though  taken  from  the 
noble  languages,  are  dissonant  :  and  the  worst  is  the  gnashing 
and  hissing  scientist,  to  which  the  epithet  '  Christian  '  (being 
considered  a  contradictory  one)  was  not  prefixed  until  after 
this  period,  but  which  was  used  by  writers  of  repute  as  early  as 
1840.  Lastly,  the  diction  of  philosophy  was  enlarged  by  the 
need  and  hampered  by  the  problem  of  finding  English  equi- 
valents for  German  terminology.  This  task  confronted  the 
translators  of  Kant,  Fichte,  and  Hegel,  and  even  those  of 
Schopenhauer,  who  writes  more  like  a  man  of  this  world  than 
the  rest.  Expressions  like  Vorstellung,  Begriff,  Anschauung, 
not  to  name  the  jargon  of  Hegelian  logic,  always  gave  trouble, 
for  no  one  English  word  was  exactly  conterminous .  The  word 
moment,  in  the  sense  of  element  or  constituent  phase,  made  its 
way  into  our  technical  vocabulary.  But  the  greatest  of  our 
insular  thinkers — Hobbes,  Berkeley,  and  Hume — have  proved 
that  a  special  dialect,  however  useful,  is  not  requisite  to  philo- 
sophy, and  that  the  nicest  shades  can  be  expressed,  unscholastic- 
ally,  in  the  mother  tongue. 


X 

Nothing  can  better  show  the  vigour,  or  the  manners,  of  the 
philosophical  prize-ring,  or  the  nature  of  the  stakes,  than  a 
glance  at  two  of  the  most  flourishing  of  the  weightier  magazines, 
and  also  at  the  record  of  the  '  Metaphysical  Society.'     The 


92  SCIENCE  AND  LETTERS 

most  notable  journal,  on  the  advanced  side,  was  the  Fortnightly 
Review  l  (which  in  fact  was  issued  monthly)  under  the  editor- 
ship, from  1867  to  1883,  of  Mr.  John  Morley,  now  Viscount 
Morley  of  Blackburn.  Its  pages  were  not  merely  an  arena  ; 
it  found  ample  room  for  pure  letters  ;  Walter  Pater,  Dante 
Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  George  Meredith  were  among  the 
contributors.  But  the  Fortnightly  was  correctly  regarded  as 
the  organ  of  fighting  rationalism,  philosophical,  political,  and 
more  especially  religious .  During  the  latter  half  of  1877,  we 
are  told,  '  nearly  every  number  contained  an  attack  by  some 
powerful  writer,  either  on  theology  as  a  whole,  or  on  some 
generally  accepted  article  of  theological  belief.'  No  label, 
however,  was  really  apt  except  the  elusive  one  of  '  liberalism,' 
of  which  the  Review,  at  that  season,  was  the  great  exponent. 
The  tone  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  though  by  no  means  calmer, 
was  more  impartial ;  the  aim  being  to  pit  against  one  another 
the  toughest  producible  combatants  from  all  sides,  to  fulfil 
the  object  glorified  in  Mill's  Liberty. 

This  journal  was  founded  in  1877  by  James  Knowles,  and  it 
may  be  regarded  as  the  offspring  of  the  Metaphysical  Society, 
which  the  same  impresario  had  suggested,  which  was  started 
in  1869  and  lived  on  for  some  twenty  years  ;  dying  then,  it  was 
said,  'of  too  much  love.'  The  Society  contained  so  many 
notable  men, representing  the  extremes  of  'Rome  and  Reason,' 
and  also  every  intermediate  shade  of  opinion,  that  it  is  easier 
to  name  the  absent,  who  included  Mill,  Newman,  Browning, 
and  Herbert  Spencer,  than  to  recount  the  members,  who 
numbered  from  first  to  last  more  than  seventy.  Lively  descrip- 
tions may  be  found  in  the  biographies  of  Huxley,  W.  G.  Ward, 
and  Tennyson.  The  object  of  the  debates  was  to  discover  some 
common  ground  of  conviction  ;  their  result  was  that  the  width 
and  depth  of  the  chasm  between  the  two  principal  parties  was 
measured,  most  amicably  indeed,  but  more  hopelessly  and 
precisely  than  ever  before.  Providence,  miracles,  the  nature 
of  the  soul  (  '  Has  a  Frog  a  Soul  ?  '),  the  possibility  of  its 
survival  ('  What  is  Death  ?  '),  and  the  stability  of  ethics,  were 
all  discussed  in  the  light  of  the  claims  of  the  new  thought  and 
science.  These  were  among  the  agenda.  The  hard  hitting, 
the  brisk  dialectic,  the  good  temper,  the  sense  of  humour,  and 
the  firm  refusal  of  so  many  open  minds  to  be  convinced,  which 
appear  to  have  distinguished  divines  and  heretics  alike  in  these 
wit -combats,  are  signally  British  characteristics  ;  and  the 
scene  can  hardly  be  imagined  in  any  continental  capital. 


CHAPTER  V 
PHILOSOPHY,  HISTORY,  AND  LETTERS 


The  links  between  science  and  history  are  riveted  by  the 
writers  who  endeavour  to  read  the  facts  of  history  in  the  spirit 
of  science.  Certainly  all  true  historians  make  this  effort,  unless 
their  bent,  as  with  Carlyle,  be  for  portrayal  mixed  with 
prophecy.  Freeman,  Stubbs,  and  Gardiner  are  scientific  ;  for 
their  method  is  rigorous  :  they  have  the  conscience  of  the 
naturalist,  they  seek  to  prove  all  things,  and  they  look  for  some 
general  laws  amid  the  welter  of  events.  But  they  are  concerned 
more  with  political  and  constitutional  matters  than  with 
thought  and  art,  or  with  manners  and  religion.  With  abstract 
philosophy  and  her  perplexities  they  have  but  a  bowing  ac- 
quaintance. But  with  Lewis, Buckle, Lecky, Maine,  andBagehot 
speculation  is  never  far  in  the  background  ;  their  operations 
include,  but  reach  far  beyond,  politics  in  the  stricter  sense  ; 
and  their  collective  labours  mark  a  new  departure  for  the 
English  mind. 

They  do  not  all  write  equally  well,  and  their  ideas  are  often 
above,  or  else  below,  their  powers  of  expression.  One  of  the 
earliest  in  the  field  is  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis  1  (1806-63). 
A  dry  mind  (not  without  dry  banter)  and  a  slow-going  writer, 
but  very  full  and  very  sound.  A  methodical,  pigeon-holing 
man,  who  begins  with  the  alphabet,  defines  and  sub-defines 
without  mercy,  multiplies  polyglot  illustrations,  and  plods 
surely  towards  conclusions  of  unmistakeable  value.  Like 
Hobbes  and  Bent  ham,  Lewis  truly  thinks  that  mankind  is 
much  befogged  by  the  ambiguities  of  words  ;  and  he  has  the 
bookman's  faith  that  mankind  will  mend  when  such  darkness 
is  cleared  away,  and  when  it  clearly  knows  the  meanings  of 
republic,  balance  of  powers,  state  of  nature,  and  the  like.  The 
Remarks  on  the  Use  and  Abuse  of  some  Political  Terms  (1832)  are 
Benthamite  in  spirit,  and  may  owe  something  to  The  Book  of 
Fallacies.  This  nominalism  marks  the  early  radicals,  and  is 
healthy  enough  ;   but  Lewis  has  much  more  learning  than  his 


94  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

masters  ;  and  learning  is  one  of  the  things  that  kept  the  school 
alive,  and  saved  it  from  the  condemnation  of  Matthew  Arnold, 
when  he  exclaimed  (in  his  pleasant  indifference  to  connected 
thinking)  that  it  was  '  doomed  to  sterility.'  The  thinking  of 
Lewis  is  British  and  solid,  without  a  ray  of  imagination.  It  is, 
in  fact,  his  principal  task  to  shatter  vain  imaginations  ;  '  Hypo- 
theses non  jingo,  immo  destruo '  might  be  his  watchword. 

In  his  Enquiry  into  the  Credibility  of  the  Early  Roman  History 
(1855)  Lewis  treats  destructively  the  guesswork  of  genius  which 
had  marred  the  speculations  of  Niebuhr :  his  acids  corroded 
many  a    hypothesis.      The  authority  of   the   great    German, 
which  had  inspired  and  oppressed  Thomas  Arnold,  was  thus 
shaken  in  England.     Lewis  went  to  the  sceptical  extreme  ;  but 
Macaulay,  for  instance,  had  jumped  at  Niebuhr's  theory  that 
the  legends  of  the  Roman  historians  are  drawn  from  a  lost 
fund  of  Roman  epic  or  ballad  poetry.1    Lewis  asks  in  vain  for 
the  evidence  of  this  connexion,  and  of  metrical  originals,  and 
with  polite  irony  commends  the  theory  for  having  begotten, 
at  any  rate,  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.     The  most  enduring 
of  his  works  seems  to  be  the  Essay  on  the  Influence  of  Authority 
in   Matters  of  Opinion  (1849).     It  covers  part  of  the  same 
ground  as  Mill's  Liberty,  but  the  temper  and  mode  of  analysis 
are  different.     Like  Mill,  but  in  a  quieter  way,  Lewis  is  ad- 
verse to  the  control  of   intellectual  conviction  by  church  or 
state.     But  while  Mill  urges  with  passion  that  such  control 
ought  not  to  exist,  Lewis  pleads  coolly  that  it  cannot  effectually 
exist,  at  least  not  without  grave  evils.     He  also  wrote  a  long 
work  on  The  Methods  of  Observation  and  Reasoning  in  Politics 
(1852).     He  certainly  has  a  liking  for  leaden  titles.    But  this 
treatise  ends  with  the  confession  of  a  sober  but  firm  belief  in 
human  progress,  in  the  spheres  of  politics,  ethics,  and  religion, 
though  not  in  that  of  art  ;   a  faith  the  more  striking,  because 
the  idea  of  evolution  makes  no  figure  in  it. 

One  of  Lewis's  liveliest  and  most  rapid  compositions  is  the 
Dialogue  on  the  Best  Form  of  Government  (1863).  Here  the 
monarchist,  the  aristocrat,  and  the  democrat  make  their 
pleas,  and  Crito,  the  impartial  judge,  who  is  Lewis,  decides 
that  there  is  no  best  form  of  government,  and  that  all  forms  are 
relative  ;  though  he  seems  to  least  dislike  a  modified  aristo- 
cracy. Bagehot  says  that  Sir  George  Lewis  was  lighter  in 
talk  than  with  his  pen,  and  we  can  believe  this  from  the  Dialogue. 
He  quotes  the  saying  about  O'Connell :  '  He  was  a  man  whom 
you  ought  to  hang,  and  to  whom  you  ought  to  build  a  monu- 
ment under  his  gallows.'     Lewis  was  a  typical,  in  some  ways 


BUCKLE  95 

an  ideal,  publicist  and  public  servant ;  a  fair-minded  Whig, 
some  time  editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  ;  a  good  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer,  if  an  odd  figure  at  the  War  Office  ;  with 
real  statesmanship,  and  not  much  literature,  in  his  composition. 
The  spirit  of  Lewis  is  critical  ;  and  first  in  the  field  with  a 
large  constructive  effort  was  Henry  Thomas  Buckle1  (1821-62), 
with  his  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  of  which  the  first 
volume  appeared  in  1857,  and  the  second  four  years  later. 
It  is  a  huge  torso  ;  or,  to  use  a  truer  figure,  a  huge  ground-plan, 
as  grandiose  as  the  '  new  Delhi,'  with  two  or  three  outbuildings 
more  or  less  completed,  while  the  central  mansion  is  hardly 
begun.  For  the  architect,  dying  all  too  soon,  never  fairly 
reached  the  history  of  civilisation  '  in  England.'  The  outbuild- 
ings are  the  chapters,  so  sharply  canvassed,  on  Spain  and  Scot- 
land. These  countries  are  presented  as  the  most  notorious  in 
all  the  realm  of  darkness.  The  ground -plan  is  the  series  of 
theses  concerning  those  impersonal  laws  which  in  Buckle's 
opinion  have  determined,  and  must  ever  determine,  the  arrest 
or  progress  of  mankind.  Each  thesis  would  be  matter  for  a 
long  debate,  and  most  of  them  provoked  violent  criticism. 
Buckle's  view  of  the  fatality  of  statistical  averages,  the  fallacy 
of  which  is  well  exposed  by  Lecky,  is  not  required  by  his  argu- 
ment, and  is  only  an  embarrassment.  His  statement  that  the 
'  aspects  of  nature,'  where,  as  in  India,  they  are  fierce  and 
impressive,  cow  the  reason,  and  only  kindle  vain  and  slavish 
imaginations,  is  ludicrous  as  applied  to  the  home  of  metaphysic. 
When  he  tells  us  that  religion  and  art  and  letters  are  only  the 
'  product,'  and  not  a  '  cause,'  of  '  civilisation,'  we  reply  that 
these  things  are  civilisation.  His  notion  that  great  men  are 
disturbing  by-products,  mere  creatures  and  not  causes  of  mighty 
changes,  is  simply  pseudo -science  run  mad,  and  a  sufficiently 
cavalier  disposal  of  Caesar  and  Mahomet.  It  was  perhaps 
prompted  by  the  exaggerations  of  Carlyle.  But  in  two  direc- 
tions at  least  Buckle  blazed  a  fresh  track  for  English  readers. 
His  very  materialism,  when  he  traces  down  national  characters 
and  fates  to  the  influence  of  climate,  food,  and  soil,  is  a  revela- 
tion of  facts  till  then  hardly  appreciated,  and  is  also  a  forecast 
of  our  larger  conception  of  geography.  But  he  came,  or  rather 
departed,  too  soon  to  appreciate  the  idea  of  evolution.  And  his 
intellectualism,  which  caused  him  to  set  down  all  improvement 
on  this  earth  to  the  march  of  mind,  is  salutary  too.  He  in- 
tensified the  general  sense  of  the  reign  of  natural  law  throughout 
the  whole  sphere  of  human  action  ;  though  he  would  not  see, 
what  Lecky  was  to  trace  so  well,  that  there  has  also  been  a 


96  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

certain  progress  in  the  moral  conceptions,  and  even  in  the 
moral  practice,  of  the  West.  In  support  of  his  views  Buckle 
marshalled  a  great  mass  of  facts,  often  ill-verified  and  half- 
digested,  but  in  the  mass  impressive.  With  all  his  faults  he 
widened  the  horizon  of  English  thought.  His  work  was  that 
of  a  self -trained  bookman,  but  it  was  fresh.  He  owed  some- 
thing, as  critics  have  remarked,  to  the  speculations  of  Comte, 
and  there  is  a  trace  of  the  French  habit  of  mind  in  his  union 
of  sweeping  generalisation  with  minute  note-taking. 

His  style,  however,  has  not  the  French  virtues.  He  is  a  hard- 
hitting, but  often  a  diffuse  writer,  with  little  sense  of  scale. 
He  is  visibly  honest,  with  many  a  spurt  of  sentiment  and  pas- 
sionate, cutting  invective.  His  outbursts  against  the  Inquisi- 
tion and  the  tyranny  of  the  Kirk  are  well  inspired.  But  he 
holds  fiercely  to  his  own  remnants  of  theology,  and  can  rise  to 
eloquence  in  maintaining  them.  At  the  end  of  his  book  there 
is  a  queer  sudden  argument  to  the  effect  that  the  theory  of  a 
moral  government  of  the  world  is  a  '  slur  on  the  Omniscience 
of  God,'  seeing  that  a  truly  infinite  wisdom  would  never  need 
to  be  '  meddling  here  and  meddling  there.'  In  a  review  of 
Mill's  Liberty  he  defends,  in  a  strain  that  recalls  Tennyson, 
the  belief  in  personal  immortality,  on  the  strength  of  the 
vehement  desire  felt  by  the  bereaved  for  reunion.  His  most 
moving  passage  occurs  at  the  end  of  his  third  chapter,  when 
he  finds  that  his  task  is  too  heavy,  and  that  he  will  never  reach 
his  history  of  '  the  free,  the  noble,  and  the  high-minded  English 
people.'  So  he  settles  down,  savagely  enough,  to  his  '  examina- 
tion of  the  Scotch  intellect  during  the  seventeenth  century.' 


II 

William  Edward  Hartpole  Lecky1  (1838-1903)  writes  much 
better,  and  inspires  more  confidence  than  Buckle  ;  he  is  a  better 
scholar,  and  sure  where  Buckle  is  rash  ;  he  does  not  start  with 
a  case  to  prove.  But,  as  a  surveyor  of  moral  and  intellectual 
history,  he  admires  and  praises  Buckle,2  though  with  many 
reserves,  and  owes  to  him  not  a  little  of  his  large  outlook  ;  and 
he  comes  in  Buckle's  wake,  for  the  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influ- 
ence of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Europe  appeared  in  1865, 
four  years  after  Buckle's  second  volume.  The  History  of 
European  Morals  from  Augustus  to  Charlemagne  (1869)  was 
published  when  Lecky  was  barely  thirty.  His  reputation  was 
now  assured.  As  he  says  himself,  the  two  works,  which  are 
really  one,  form  an  essay  in  the  science  3 ;  which  had  been 


LECKY:   RATIONALISM  97 

founded  by  Vico  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  expanded 
by  Condorcet,  Herder,  Hegel,  and  Comte,  and  latterly  by 
Buckle  too  :  the  science  that  conceives  of  history  as  '  not  a 
series  of  biographies,  or  accidents,  or  pictures,  but  a  great 
organic  whole.'  It  is  Lecky's  praise  that  he  truly  enriched  this 
conception.  His  lecture  (1892)  on  The  Political  Value  of  History 
presents  his  ideas  in  their  ripest  form,  and  in  his  most  limpid 
style.  • 

Vi*  makes  it,  his  husinpRS  t^  °toov  i^f"'^n  thQ  ^?rtri^mor  of 

Buckle.  Whose  ide-ft  of  histpry,  hp  sflyrj  implinr  '  Inn-Hnp  nut  tViP 

men  and  women,'  and  of  Carlyle  with  his  '  heroes.'  Few 
historians  have  steered  so  well.  Lecky  seems  happiest  and 
most  at  home  when  he  is  moving  among  impersonal  forces,  and 
tracing  the  growth  and  decline  of  ideas  as  they  have  coloured 
human  feeling  and  action.  But  he  is  also  alive  to  the  influence 
of  persons,  and  presents  them  with  much  skill.  And  he  appreci- 
ates an  element  for  which  neither  Buckle  nor  Carlyle  duly  allows 
— the  element  of  accident.1  meaning  thereby  the  fatal  ironical 
twist  that  may  be  given  to  events  by  small  and  apparently 
irrelevant  personages.  He  appreciates  that  saying,  which 
gives  trouble  to  the  scientific  historian,  about  the  length  of 
Cleopatra's  nose.  A  campaign,  and  all  that  turns  upon  it, 
may  be  determined  by  '  some  obscure  captain  who  perhaps 
moved  h^s  men  to  the  right  when  he  should  have  moved  them 
to  the  left.'  Once,  in  a  letter,  he  notes  the  effect  of  a  woman 
upon  the  course  of  recent  Irish  politics. 

The  ruling  ideas  of  the  Rationalism  often  tally  with  those  of 
Mill's  Liberty  (1859).  Error,  if  honest,  is  innocent  ;  the  in- 
dividual may  form  and  utter  his  opinions  freely ;  it  is  fatal 
for  the  church  or  state  to  endeavour  to  subdue  the  mind. 
But  Lecky's  treatment  is  historical,  not  controversial,  and 
covers  a  spacious  field.  He  traces  the  belief  in  the  miraculous 
(including  magic  and  witchcraft),  and  the  causes  of  its  decline. 
Then  he  traces  the  history  of  persecution,  and  of  toleration. 
He  finds  the  roots  of  superstition  and  cruelt}7  in  the  darker  forms 
of  theological  dogma,  and  their  decline  he  explains  by  the  decay 
of  belief  in  that  dogma.  And  his  handling  is  the  fresher,  that 
he  does  not  argue  about  the  reality  of  miracles  or  of  witches. 
His  picture  shows  the  human  mind,  in  Matthew  Arnolds 
phrase,  in  the  act  of  ;  turning  away  '  from  such  beliefs.  In  the 
age  of  W.  G.  Ward  and  Mozley,  of  Huxley  and  the  dispute 
over  the  '  possessed  pigs,'  this  picture,  though  it  did  not 
decide  the  philosophical  question,  told  as  much  as  all  the 
arguments.  Lecky  shows  that  mankind  does  not  reason  itself 
VOL.  i.  G 


98  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

out  of  such  tenets,  but  suddenly  finds,  without  much  surprise, 
that  it  does  not  hold  them.  But  he  also  does  full  justice,  in  his 
chronicle  of  toleration,  to  the  great  reasoners  and  champions — 
to  Zwingli  and  Montaigne,  to  Hooker  and  Taylor,  who  in  the 
long  run  made  this  conversion  swifter. 

The  book  on  European  Morals  exhibits  the  natural  history  of 
some  of  the  moral  sentiments,  the  changing  weight  attached  to 
different  virtues  in  the  course  of  centuries,  and  the  measure  in 
which  that  change  has  made  mankind  happier.  The  book  is  a 
pendant  to  the  nationalism,  which  had  described  the  decay  of 
certain  opinions  that  retarded  morality.  Part  of  the  ground  is 
thus  gone  over  again.  But  in  the  Morals  Lecky  feels  bound  to 
declare  from  the  first  his  own  speculative  position.  He  takes 
sides  in  the  great  schism  among  the  moral  philosophers,  and 
opens  with  a  long  defence  of  the  intuitional  theory  of  ethic. 
I  do  not  know  that  the  rest  of  his  book — his  account  of  the 
Stoics,  or  of  the  Roman  games,  or  of  the  Christian  virtues,  or 
of  the  cult  of  celibacy,  or  of  the  position  of  women — could  have 
been  very  different  had  he  found  himself  in  the  opposite  camp. 
The  utilitarian  thinker  can  accept  it  all.  Still,  the  line  that 
Lecky  took,  though  never  prompted  by  mere  tactics,  won  the 
very  audience  that  had  to  be  convinced.  Lecky,  by  his  tone  and 
antecedents,  was  just  the  man  to  forestall  conservative  alarms. 
He  was  no  radical  firebrand,  or  self-taught,  like  Mr.  Buckle. 
He  was  judicial,  moderate,  reassuring,  Dublin-trained.  He  was 
of  Irish  Protestant  (and  English)  stock,  and  had  thought  of 
taking  orders.  He  did  not,  like  Mr.  Mill,  stand  pointedly  out- 
side the  great  ruling  caste.  Nor  was  he  dull  and  tame.  He  was 
capable  of  rare  sallies  of  impassioned  rhetoric,  such  as  occur  in  his 
essay  on  'the  position  of  women  ' ;  and,  with  all  its  touch  of  the 
pulpit,  it  was  good  and  generous  rhetoric.  And  his  tone,  though 
it  could  not  be  called  puritanical,  was  '  Victorian ' ;  it  was  that  of 
the  refined  student  who  brings  himself ,  with  much  reluctance  and 
some  apologies,  to  lift  the  veil  from  ugly  corners  of  moral  history 
when  truth  and  completeness  so  require.  Yet  he  was  not  timid. 
Lecky 's  intellectual  conscience  bore  him  on  at  times  to  daring  con- 
clusions, always  backed  by  an  array  of  references  and  authorities : 

Had  the  Irish  peasants  been  less  chaste,  they  would  have  been 
more  prosperous.     (Morals,  ch.  iv.) 

Herself  the  supreme  type  of  vice,  she  is  ultimately  the  most 
efficient  guardian  of  virtue.     (Morals,  ch.  v.) . 

That  vice  has  often  proved  an  emancipator  of  the  mind,  is  one  of 
the  most  humiliating,  but,  at  the  same  time,  one  of  the  most  un- 
questionable, facts  in  history.     (Rationalism,  ch.  iv.  pt.  ii.) 


LECKY  :    HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND  99 

III 

Strokes  like  this  are  rarer  in  Lecky's  capital  production, 
A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  the  labour  of 
some  nineteen  years.  The  first  two  volumes  of  the  original 
eight  appeared  in  1878,  the  last  two  in  1890.  Equity,  com- 
prehensiveness, the  tone  of  a  judge's  charge,  are  among  its 
virtues  ;  Irish  wit  and  paradox,  though  not  Irish  eloquence, 
are  absent.  Lecky  seems  to  have  been  aware  of  the  risks,  for 
he  writes  (1882)  :  * 

People  begin  to  talk  of  me  as  if  I  were  another  '  judicious 1  Hooker,' 
so  moderate,  so  judicious,  etc.,  so  I  fear  I  must  be  growing  very 
dull.  I  am  afraid  that  nothing  short  of  some  great  indiscretion  or 
paradox  can  save  me. 

In  Froude,  the  effect  of  whose  English  in  Ireland  he  desired 
to  counteract,  Lecky  had  found  worse  than  indiscretion  and 
paradox  ;  but  he  did  not  need  his  own  warning.  Nature  had 
given  him  a  nice  and  fine  historical  conscience  ;  he  knew  that 
truth  is  complicated  ;  he  wished,  and  his  wish  was  granted, 
that  those  who  desired  the  trutli  should  consult  his  History. 
He  had  to  present  and  judge  the  history  of  the  Whig  party,  of 
the  American  war,  and  of  the  French  Revolution  in  its  reaction 
on  English  affairs  ;  the  chronicle  of  intellectual  and  social 
toleration  ;  the  record  of  the  Kirk,  and  that  of  the  English  in 
Ireland.  He  had  to  portray  not  only  the  English  statesmen, 
but  Junius  and  Wilkes  and  George  the  Third,  and  Washington 
and  Franklin.  He  had  also  to  expound  the  conceptions  of  the 
moralists  and  social  philosophers,  in  so  far  as  they  influenced 
events  ;  and  his  gallery  ranges  from  Paley  to  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau.  In  two  of  his  most  animated  chapters  he  sketches 
the  life  and  manners  of  the  people,  their  tastes  and  amusements, 
and  also  the  record  of  English  music  and  architecture.  Cer- 
tainly this  was  a  gallant  effort  to  conceive  of  history  as  '  a  great 
organic  whole,'  and  the  result  is  one  of  the  widest,  soundest, 
and  best -ordered  surveys  produced  in  the  Victorian  age. 

If  the  History  ever  drags,  it  is  where  the  matter  is  almost 
impracticable.  The  confusions  that  followed  on  the  fall  of 
Walpole,  and  the  debates  on  the  Regency,  are  no  doubt  im- 
portant ;  but  they  are  mean  and  thorny  topics,  and  are  treated 
with  a  strong  sense  of  duty.  Lecky's  temper  is  Whiggish,  of 
the  cautious  slowly-innovating  type  ;  he  has  not  the  party 
zest  that  carries  Macaulay  through  this  kind  of  work,  and  he 
cannot   bring  himself  to  imitate  Macaulay 's  emphasis.     Nor 


100  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

are  his  portraits  so  compact  and  distinct.  He  dissects  rather 
than  portrays — dissects  with  an  invaluable  rightness  and  fair- 
ness. He  does  not  spare  points  and  anecdotes,  but  they  come 
in  to  lighten  the  dissertation,  rather  like  the  tales  in  the  Gesta 
Romanorum. 

Nothing  can  weaken  our  admiration  for  his  catholicity,  width, 
and  sureness.  There  is  plenty  of  life  in  his  narrative.  The 
American  battles,  the  affair  of  Benedict  Arnold  and  Andre, 
the  breach  between  Burke  and  Fox,  are  related  in  a  masterly 
way,  though  not  in  Carlyle's  way.  Lecky  learnt  from  Macaulay 
the  craft  of  arraying  pointed  instances  in  order  to  illustrate  a 
custom,  an  abuse,  or  a  superstition  ;  and  he  is  most  himself  when 
he  does  this  to  make  us  realise  some  far-spreading  principle  or 
tendency.  Such  had  been  his  habit  in  the  Rationalism  and 
the  Morals.  The  variety  of  his  gifts  and  the  complexion  of 
his  mind  are  nowhere  better  seen  than  in  his  chapter  on 
Methodism.  The  recital  is  alive,  the  documents  are  ample, 
the  sketches  of  character  are  admirable.  The  temper  is  better 
still.  It  is  not  that  of  the  aggressive  radical,  still  less  of 
what  is  called  the  religious  world.  It  is  easy  to  hear  the 
undertone  of  measured  disgust  with  which  Lecky,  the  refined, 
the  liberal,  the  intellectual,  beholds  the  narrowness  of  the 
Methodists  and  their  alienation  from  the  mind  of  England.  He 
is  describing  it  from  without  ;  him  it  does  not  touch.  Yet  he 
feels  in  every  line  that  he  is  dealing  with  a  potent  national 
force,  and  with  a  cult  which,  as  he  points  out  with  real  emotion, 
has  consoled  millions  of  dying  persons.  It  is  not  his  own  cult  ; 
but  it  is  the  last  touch  of  Lecky 's  fairness,  that  there  is  no 
reluctance  in  his  admiration  for  the  good  things  in  Methodism. 
It  is  easy  to  see  how  far  he  stands  from  the  contempt  felt  by 
the  '  enlightenment  '  for  '  enthusiasm  '  ;  for  that  very  contempt 
is  part  of  his  theme  and  takes  its  place  in  his  pattern. 

This  great  work  was  originally  two  books  in  one  :  the  history 
of  England,  and  the  history  of  Ireland.  In  later  editions 
Lecky  unpicked  the  history  of  Ireland,  which  had  grown  out 
of  scale  ;  wove  it  together  again,  and  published  it  singly,  with  a 
clear  gain  in  shapeliness  and  proportion.  He  had  qualified 
long  before  as  a  student  of  his  own  country.  His  youthful 
work,  Leaders  of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland,  with  its  sketches  of 
Swift,  Flood,  Grattan,  and  O'Connell,  he  afterwards  cut  down 
and  greatly  recast.1  He  had  to  explain- that  his  respect  for 
an  Irish  Parliament  of  propertied  and  Protestant  gentry  con- 
sisted perfectly  with  the  Unionism  of  his  later  years.  In  the 
History  of  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  his  equity  was  put 


LECKY  101 

to  its  severest  trial.  He  belonged  to  the  school  for  whom  the 
difference  between  history  and  politics  is  only  one  of  date  ; 
'  history  is  past  politics.'  Yet  he  also  believed  that  the  his- 
torian exists  to  describe  things  as  they  really  and  precisely 
were,  without  reading  back  the  conceptions  of  later  into  earlier 
times.  We  may  agree  or  not  with  Lecky's  opinions,  but  few 
writers  have  done  more  to  conciliate  these  two  ideals  of  the 
historian's  task.  The  History  of  Ireland  closes  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Union.  In  one  way  it  is  less  of  a  book  than 
the  History  of  England,  for  it  contains  fewer  of  Lecky's  brilliant 
'characters,'  or  of  his  reviews  of  manners  and  customs.  In- 
stead, there  are  immensely  long  summaries  of  speeches,  letters, 
pamphlets,  and  documents,  the  result  of  personal  digging  and 
inquiry.  It  is  in  this  material,  coupled  with  the  severe  coolness 
and  impartiality  of  the  tone,  that  the  worth  of  the  History  lies. 
Nor  does  the  historian  hide  his  own  final  judgement  ;  his  con- 
demnation of  Pitt  for  repudiating  the  pledge  to  the  Catholics 
is  decided  enough.  And,  as  the  work  proceeds,  it  is  plain 
that  the  shadow  of  1887  lies  over  it.  The  latter  pages  were 
written  in  1890  ;  and  they  form  a  transition  to  Lecky's  writings 
on  democracy,  and  to  his  Unionist  speeches  and  pamphlets. 

Democracy  and  Liberty  (1894)  is  a  series  of  separate  yet  con- 
nected studies  on  English,  French,  German,  and  American 
democracy  :  on  the  growth  of  Socialism  down  to  the  Fabian 
Society  inclusive  ;  on  the  marriage  laws,  the  history  of  tolera- 
tion, and  almost  every  great  social  question.  The  tone  is 
tinged  with  doubt  and  even  with  gloom  ;  it  is  that  of  a  man  who 
sees  the  old  reasonable  Liberal  landmarks  slipping  away,  after 
the  second  Home  Rule  Bill  and  the  increase  of  mob-power. 
A  noteworthy  '  character  '  of  Gladstone  precedes  the  edition 
of  1 896.  The  praise  is  fair-minded,  though  it  is  bestowed  against 
the  grain  ;  the  mistrust  is  cordial.  It  is  one  of  Lecky's  most 
careful  portraits,  but  it  produces  a  sense  of  bewilderment  and 
externality  rather  than  of  wholeness  or  clearness.  The  traits 
are  unharmonised,  and  the  note  of  repulsion,  almost  of  alarm, 
contrasts  with  Bagehot's  gay  and  masterly  sketch  of  many 
years  before.  Lecky  produced  in  1899  a  miscellany  of  reflec- 
tions and  essays  called  The  Map  of  Life  :  a  not  very  salient 
work,  comprising  media  axiomata  on  compromise,  marriage, 
success,  money,  and  many  other  things  ;  and  he  wrote  some 
refined  verse .  A  posthumous  gathering  of  Political  and  Historical 
Essays  is  much  more  nutritious,  with  its  notices  of  Carlyle 
and  Newman,  and  its  account  of  the  influences  that  moulded 
Lecky's  own  mind. 


102  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

IV 

The  effort  of  Bent  ham  to  find  a  new  foundation  for  legal 
science  in  the  principle  of  the  greatest  happiness  was  carried 
on  by  the  eminent  jurist  John  Austin  (1790-1859),  author  of 
The  Province  of  Jurisprudence  Determined  (1832),  and  the  teacher 
of  many  publicists  and  thinkers,  including  Cornewall  Lewis 
and  John  Stuart  Mill.  Austin  was  not,  like  most  of  his  school, 
a  democrat,  and  judged  that  a  wide  franchise  did  not  make  for 
the  greatest  happiness.  Mill,  however,  acknowledges  a  heavy 
debt  to  his  inspiration  :  and  Austin's  skill  in  analysing  and 
clearing  up  the  fundamental  ideas  of  sovereignty,  punishment, 
and  legal  right  make  his  work  a  landmark.  His  influence 
seems  to  have  been  chiefly  indirect,  and  on  the  few,  and  his 
rigorous  style  is  hardly  that  of  a  man  of  letters. 

The  study  of  institutional  history  in  its  larger  bearings  was 
signally  advanced  by  Sir  Henry  James  Sumner  Maine *  (1822-88), 
another  of  Austin's  debtors  and  admirers.  A  master  of  clean- 
cut  brilliant  exposition,  his  great  achievement,  apart  from  his 
actual  contribution  to  knowledge,  was  to  drive  into  the  educated 
mind  the  truth  that  the  study  of  law,  past  and  present,  so  far 
from  being  an  isolated  or  stationary  thing,  opened  out  new 
vistas  in  the  study  of  history,  custom,  philosophy,  and  religion. 
This  idea,  as  well  as  the  scientific  method  of  applying  it,  Maine 
made  common  property.  His  work  won  European  recognition. 
A  son  of  Cambridge  and  a  senior  classic,  he  became  a  noted 
lecturer  on  jurisprudence,  and  founded  his  reputation  by  his 
Ancient  Law  (1861);  which  threw  fresh  light  on  the  historical 
import  of  such  ideas  as  the  '  law  of  nature  '  and  the  social 
compact,  and  also  on  the  connexions  between  theology  and 
jurisprudence.  The  phenomena  of  early  communities  he 
illustrated  from  Indian  law  and  usage,  his  knowledge  of  which 
he  greatly  increased  by  his  seven  years'  stay  in  India  ;  where  he 
held  the  post  of  legal  member  of  Council  and  supervised  the 
work,  initiated  by  Macaulay,  of  codification.  Maine's  contact 
with  the  life  of  the  East  added  colour  and  pungency  to  his 
subsequent  writings,  and  the  experience  is  reflected  in  his 
Village  Communities  (1871).  in  The  Early  History  of  Institu- 
tions (1875),  and  in  Early  Laiv  and  Custom  (1883),  a  work 
in  which  he  draws  on  Indian  as  well  as  on  English,  French, 
and  Slavonic  history.  His  mastery  of  statement,  and  of 
a  style  at  once  rigorous  and  attractive,  is  nowhere  more 
apparent. 

There  is  no  better  Cambridge  prose  than  that  of  Sir  Henry 


MAINE  103 

Maine.  By  Cambridge  prose  I  mean  a  prose  of  which  logic, 
reason,  and  dislike  of  surplusage  form  the  mental  basis,  and 
which  is  distinguished  by  the  great  eighteenth-century  virtues 
of  closeness,  orderliness,  incisive  clearness,  and  freedom  from 
rhetoric.  These  qualities  are  found  in  the  writings  of  the 
Stephen  family,  of  Henry  Sidgwick,  and  in  men  of  the  older 
generation  like  Mill.  The  poetic  strain  of  Oxford  (which  ex- 
tends to  her  prose),  her  appeal  to  the  heart  and  imagination,  and 
also  her  vices  of  weakness,  vagueness,  and  '  preciousness,'  are 
more  rarely  found  in  the  sister  university.  Most  of  tb^  Cam- 
bridge poets  have  written  in  verse.  Maine  has  plenty  of  the 
best  sort  of  academic  pungency  ;  his  experience  as  a  lecturer 
makes  him  careful  of  the  pleasure  of  the  lay  reader.  His 
manner  and  temper  can  be  illustrated  even  from  a  few 
sentences,  which  occur  in  his  last  considerable  book,  Popular 
Government : 

Towards  the  close  of  the  poem  this  line  occurs — '  I  heard  a  voice 
say,  What  is  Freedom  ? '  It  is  impossible  that  the  voice  could  ask 
a  more  pertinent  question.  If  the  author  of  Towards  Democracy 
had  ever  heard  the  answer  of  Hobbes,  that  Freedom  is  '  political 
power  divided  into  small  fragments,'  or  the  dictum  of  John  Austin 
and  M.  Scherer,  that  '  Democracy  is  a  form  of  government,'  his 
poetical  vein  might  have  been  drowned,  but  his  mind  would  have 
been  invigorated  by  the  healthful  douche  of  cold  water. 

In  the  same  work  Maine  quotes  with  approval  the  saying 
of  Machiavelli,  that  '  the  world  is  made  up  of  the  vulgar,'  and 
he  seems  to  be  always  mentally  adding  that  the  vulgar  can 
never  be  trusted.  In  this  attitude  he  did  not  stand  alone,  but 
represented  a  formidable  weight  of  learned  and  philosophical 
opinion.  For  the  new  study  of  history,  politics,  and  law, 
though  greatly  enriched  in  material,  and  also  refreshed  by  the 
principle  of  natural  selection,  by  no  means  exclusively  favoured 
an  encouraging  view  of  human  progress,  and  still  less  the  read- 
ing of  such  progress  in  democratic  terms.  The  opposition  to 
Mill — who  was  indeed  no  pure-blooded  democrat — and  to  his 
school  was  partly  provoked  by  Mill  himself,  but  was  now 
reinforced  from  the  ranks  of  the  learned,  and  may  be  regarded 
as  a  legacy,  transformed  and  reinvested,  from  the  old  reaction 
against  the  French  Revolution.  It  is  enough  here  to  point 
to  the  diverse  criticisms  of  Sir  James  Stephen,  in  his  Liberty, 
Equality,  and  Fraternity  (1873),  of  Maine  himself  in  Popular 
Government  (1885),  and  of  Lecky  in  his  Democracy  and  Liberty 
(1896). 


104  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 


If  we  must  wait,  for  a  generation  in  order  to  measure  the 
staying  power  of  a  writer,  there  are  good  omens  for  Walter 
Bagehot1  (1826-77).  In  his  lifetime  he  was  chiefly  known 
as  the  editor  of  the  Economist,  which  he  conducted  for  many 
years  ;  as  the  writer  of  Lombard  Street  (1873),  a  "classical  picture 
not  only  of  the  principles  and  forces  of  banking,  but  of  the 
actual  temper  and  motives  of  the  market  ;  and  also  to  a  wider 
circle,  for  his  English  Constitution  (1865-7),  of  which  the  most 
obvious  feature  was  Bagehot 's  power  of  beginning  at  the  right 
end,  namely  with  living  and  working  realities  as  distinct  from 
paper  theories,  and  of  exhibiting  those  realities.  After  his 
death  were  collected  various  groups  of  essays,  biographical, 
literary,  and  economic  ;  Richard  Holt  Hutton,  Bagehot 's 
friend  and  fellow -collegian,  edited  these  volumes,  and  wrote 
two  short  memoirs  ;  but  Bagehot \s  biography  and  letters  only 
appeared  a  few  years  ago.  He  emerges,  beyond  a  doubt,  as  one 
of  the  freshest  and  alertest  of  the  neglected  Victorian  writers. 
His  beat  is  entirely  his  own,  his  eyesight  is  his  own,  and  his 
English,  though  sometimes  careless,  is  most  excellent  and 
overflows  with  life.  It  seems  almost  unfair  that  an  authority 
on  silver  and  the  exchange,  consulted  by  Gladstone  and  im- 
mersed in  banking,  should  not  only  speculate,  in  his  Physics  and 
Politics  (1872),  on  the  working  of  Darwinian  principles  in  early 
societies,  and  interest  Darwin  thereby,  but  should  also  be  a 
critic  of  Shakespeare  and  Lady  Mary  Wort  ley  Montagu  and 
Hartley  Coleridge,  with  a  queer  psychological  gift  of  his  own  ; 
a  gift  which  he  applies,  with  equal  relish,  to  Brougham  and 
Bolingbroke  and  Lyndhurst,  to  Cobden  and  Adam  Smith.  On 
these  essays,  along  with  The  English  Constitution,  Bage hot's 
reputation  as  a  writer  rests.  And  he  is  a  good  writer,  if  not 
exactly  a  great  one  ;  above  all,  at  his  best,  he  is  a  satisfactory 
writer,  a  wise  converser  who  keeps  you  awake  ;  not  rhetorical, 
and  free  from  the  professional  solemnity  and  moral  strain  that 
tire  us  in  some  of  his  contemporaries  ;  yet  never  common,  or 
familiar  in  the  wrong  way.  One  or  two  clues  to  his  peculiar 
cast  of  thinking  may  be  suggested. 

The  liveliest  of  men,  with  a  glancing  brain  and  restless  temper, 
Bagehot  is  fond  of  dwelling  on  the  ubiquity,  and  also  on  the 
value,  of  dulness,  or  rather  of  slow-wittedness,  in  human  affairs, 
for  the  conduct  of  the  tough  work  of  the  world.  He  delights  to 
tell  us  how,  above  all  in  Britain,  the  labour  of  administration, 
of  enterprise,  of  trade,  of  politics,  of  committees,  is  done  by 


BAGEHOT  105 

the  mutual  friction  of  opaque,  safe,  honest  intellects,  not  too 
sensitive  for  the  job.     He  likes  such  statesmen  as  Lord  Althorp 
(he  might  have  added  the  late  Duke  of  Devonshire), who  share, 
guide,  and  understand  such  a  spirit.     He  understood  it  himself, 
humorouslv  ;    he  saw  it  everv  dav  in  the  City.     He  felt  that 
'  there  is  a  sickly  incompleteness  about  people  too  fine  for  the 
world,  and  too  nice  to  work  their  way  in  it.'     This  attitude  is 
one  reason  why  his  portraits  of  men  of  affairs  are  so  good.     He 
saw  them  as  specimens  ;  in  their  setting,  in  their  action  on  the 
national  life,  in  their  place  in  the  great  game.     He  is  equally 
alive  to  what  such  persons  lack,  and  to  the  world  of  sensibility 
which  they  so  comfortably  and  efficiently  dispense  with.     His 
cameos  of  Lyndhurst  and  Brougham  exemplify  this  acuteness 
of  view.      He  imagines  Brougham,  the  incalculable,  the  per- 
verse, the  lawyer-tribune-reformer,  not  quite  sane,  yet  a  bene- 
factor after  all,  rushing  about  Coventry,  not '  hanging '  or  musing 
*  on  the  bridge,'  but  putting  everything  right,  talking  of  the 
'  schooling  of  the  porter's  eldest   boy,'  and  deficient  in  the 
'  stillness,'  the  power  of  mental  retreat,  which  is  the  condition 
of  imaginative  work,  and  therefore  in  the  capacity  for  the 
truest  oratory.     Bagehot's  most  difficult  subject,  of  this  order, 
was  Gladstone  ;    and  for  analytic  power  his  article  still  holds 
the  field,  telling  us  more  than  the  biographies.     Here  he  has  to 
reckon  with  the  man's  inner  life,  and  with  the  strangest  complex 
of  faculties,  as  well  as  with  the  maker  or  marrer  of  history  ; 
with  '  the  soul  of  a  martyr,'  as  he  says,  '  and  the  intellect  of  an 
advocate.'     At  the  other  extreme,  his  memoir  of  James  Wilson, 
his  father-in-law,  the  Indian  administrator,  an  admirable  but 
pure  man  of  affairs,  is  a  pattern  of  how  such  things  may  be 
done. 

Bagehot,  from  his  youth  up,  was  deeply  conversant  with  the 
later  history  and  the  different  layers  of  English  public  life. 
His  union  of  information  and  shrewdness  qualified  him,  like 
his  actual  contact  with  business,  to  write  his  English  Constitution. 
This  work,  we  remember,  was  much  quoted  some  years  ago  when 
the  Lords  were  deprived  of  the  absolute  veto  ;  it  had  already 
become  an  authority,  not  only  with  professors,  but  in  practice. 
The  chapters  on  the  Cabinet,  on  the  Upper  House,  on  the 
place  filled  by  the  sovereign  in  the  popular  mind,  are  classical  ; 
and  the}-  are  remote  in  standpoint  from  any  political  party  of 
Bagehot's  own  time  or  since.  Some  of  the  interest  of  the  book, 
no  doubt,  depends  on  the  change  of  conditions.  It  makes  us 
wonder  how  Bagehot  would  have  spoken  of  the  rise  of  labour, 
the  Liberal  'split,'  the  last  Coalition,  and  the  reaction  of  the  war 


106  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

on  the  seat  of  political  control.  His  own  point  of  view  may  be 
described  as  anti-radical  rather  than  actually  conservative.  He 
had  little  of  Burke's  mystical  reverence  for  the  established 
edifice,  but  he  liked,  as  I  have  said,  the  slow-going  British  habit 
of  mind  as  a  check  on  mere  plunging  experiments  ;  like  Prospero 
he  said,  'tis  a  good  dulness.'  This  note  is  anticipated  in 
his  early,  rather  flippant  letters  from  Paris  upon  the  coup 
d'etat ;  the  unballasted  French,  he  then  thought,  required  a 
master.  But  he  afterwards  saw  through  the  pasteboard 
Caesar,  and  prophesied,  in  1865,  that  'the  present  happiness 
of  France  is  happiness  on  a  short  life-lease.' 

VI 

Most  of  Bagehot's  literary  studies  were  written  between  1850 
and  1865.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  1856,  wrote  to  him  in  praise  of  his 
paper  upon  Shelley.     This  and  some  companion  essays,  he  says, 

seem  to  me  to  be  of  the  very  first  quality,  showing  not  talent  only* 
but  a  concern  for  the  simple  truth  which  is  rare  in  English  literature, 
as  it  is  in  English  politics  and  English  religion. 

Matthew  Arnold  may  have  been  predisposed  towards  a  critic 
who  was  somewhat  deficient  in  popular  sympathies  and  dis- 
trustful of  golden  dreams,  and  who,  like  himself,  looked  askance 
on  Shelley.  Bagehot's  emphasis  on  Shelley's  eager  and  hectic 
side  shows  a  distinct  misreading  of  Shelley  ;  and  this  is  not 
one  of  his  best  papers .  But  Matthew  Arnold  rightly  assigns  to 
Bagehot  a  '  concern  for  the  simple  truth,'  just  as  he  is  right  in 
denying  it  to  Macaulay.  Still,  on  Macaulay,  Bagehot  is  the 
sounder  critic  of  the  two  : 

Macaulay  is  anything  but  a  mere  rhetorical  writer  ;  there  is  a 
very  hard  kernel  of  business  in  him.  .  .  .  This  is  what  Macaulay 
does  for  us  in  history,  at  least  what  he  does  best :  he  engraves 
indelibly  the  main  outlines  and  the  rough  common  sense  of  the 
matter.  Other  more  refining,  and  perhaps  in  some  respects  more 
delicate  minds,  may  add  the  nicer  details,  and  explain  those  waver- 
ing, flickering,  and  inconstant  facts  of  human  nature  which  are 
often  either  above  common  sense  or  below  it.  .  .  . 

This  keeps  the  balance  better  than  Matthew  Arnold's  on- 
slaught, some  fourteen  years  earlier,  on  the  '  rhetorician,'  or 
than  Mark  Pattison's  contemptuous  words  on  the  '  materialist.' 
It  forecasts  the  deserved,  and  perhaps  now  assured,  reaction  in 
Macaulay's  favour. 

Bagehot  has  been  cried  up  as  a  critic  for  excellences  at 
which    he  did  not  aim,    and   has    also    been  cried  down  as 


BAGEHOT:    CRITICISM  107 

an  amateur.  He  is  an  amateur,  but  it  is  a  pity  that  there 
are  not  more  like  him.  He  must  be  judged  from  his  own 
point  of  departure.  He  does  not  begin  with  theory,  or  philo- 
sophy, or  learning  ;  nor,  again,  does  he  begin  with  form  :  in 
fact,  he  often  never  gets  to  form  at  all,  being  beguiled  on  the 
way  by  the  study  of  character.  He  begins  with  character,  with 
life  and  its  strangeness.  A  writer  is  one  of  the  oddest  varieties 
of  the  genus  homo  ;  let  us  see  what  he  was  like,  let  us  find  his 
mental  habitat,  his  climate,  his  humour  ;  it  is  all  to  be  read  in 
his  work.  There  was  nothing  new  in  this  idea  ;  it  was  the  age 
of  Sainte-Beuve,  who  made  such  a  quest  his  profession.  Walter 
Bagehot  is  unprofessional ;  he  starts  from  men  and  business  ; 
he  finds  in  literature  a  new  digging-ground,  yet  more  interesting 
than  business  in  that  it  expresses  the  higher  and  rarer  part  of 
the  mind .  What  interests  him  in  a  writer — in  Hartley  Coleridge , 
or  in  Cowper,  or  in  Dickens — is  this  rarer  part,  as  it  interacts 
with  the  daily  career  and  habit  of  the  man.  He  adventures  on 
Shakespeare,  and  quotes  the  passage  from  Venus  and  Adonis 
on  the  hare,  and  adds  : 

It  is  absurd,  by  the  way,  to  say  we  know  nothing  about  the  man 
who  wrote  that ;  we  know  that  he  had  been  after  a  hare.  It  is 
idle  to  allege  that  mere  imagination  would  tell  him  that  a  hare  is 
apt  to  run  among  a  flock  of  sheep,  or  that  its  doing  so  disconcerts 
the  scent  of  hounds. 

Shakespeare's  '  amazing  sympathy  with  common  people,'  his 
command  of  their  ways  of  thought  and  of  their  wandering 
diction  ;  his  capacity,  nevertheless,  for  solitude,  and  his  strain 
of  melancholy,  which  is  not  pessimism  ;  his  belief  in  the  fairies, 
in  the  '  paganism  of  the  South  of  England  '  ;  all  this  is  well 
conceived,  and  as  well  said.  It  is  worth  any  amount  of  gush, 
and  a  good  many  treatises.  One  of  Bagehot 's  best  papers,  in 
another  style,  is  that  on  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  an  ideal 
subject  for  a  causerie  ;  and  another  is  that,  of  early  date,  on 
The  First  Edinburgh  Reviewers,  with  its  analysis  of  the  Whig 
soul,  and  its  contrast  between  the  competent  mundane  arbiter 
Jeffrey  and  the  long-slighted,  enduring  Wordsworth.  The 
remarks,  too,  on  the  '  singular  delicacy  of  expression  and  idea  ' 
to  be  found  in  the  novels  of  Dickens  (1858)  are  those  of  a  true 
but  discerning  believer. 

Bagehot,  without  any  claim  to  prowess  in  metaphysics,  has  a 
distinctly  philosophical  background  to  his  mind,  which  is  not 
seen  merely  in  his  political  reflections.  He  had,  like  all  of  us, 
his  working  supposition  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  universe,  and 


108  PHILOSOPHY  AND  HISTORY 

he  was  strongly  influenced  by  Bishop  Butler.  He  gives  us  a 
taste  of  his  natural  theology  in  the  remarkable  paper  (1862) 
on  The  Ignorance  of  Man.  '  In  a  large  universe  like  this,'  he 
writes  in  an  early  letter,  '  we  must  not  expect  a  very  exact 
nicety.'  The  phrase  is  characteristic,  and  in  the  article  referred 
to  he  gives  his  own  variant  on  the  old  idea  that  life  is  a  pro- 
bation for  our  faith  and  our  ignorance.  The  world  of  matter,  of 
gravel,  and  ugly  plants  and  insects — what  can  it  all  mean  ? 
Well,  it  can  only  be  in  the  nature  of  a  screen  ;  it  looks  irrelevant, 
but  really,  if  all  things  were  clear,  morality  would  no  longer  be 
disinterested  ;  for  the  consequences  of  every  action  would  be 
too  obvious  and  overpowering,  and  the  moral  will  would  have 
no  choice.  Our  fellow-men,  too, — what  if  they  were  much  less 
visibly  imperfect  ?  Then,  also,  there  would  be  no  theatre  of 
struggle,  no  morality  ;  blessed,  once  more,  are  the  uses  of 
stupidity  !  All  this  Bagehot  sets  out  in  his  regular  style,  on 
which  there  is  little  to  say  except  that  it  is  very  natural  and 
very  good,  and  that  we  do  not  much  notice  it,  which  is  what  he 
would  have  wished.  He  seems  to  have  no  particular  pedigree 
as  a  writer,  though  he  has  been  compared  with  some  truth  to 
Hazlitt.  There  is  some  jerkiness  and  restlessness  ;  but  it  is 
a  good  epistolary  style,  naturally  right  and  sharp,  untrimmed 
and  unconscious.  Legibility,  he  says  in  one  place,  is  given  to 
those 

who  are  willing  to  be  themselves,  to  write  their  own  thoughts  in 
their  own  words,  in  the  simplest  words,  in  the  words  wherein  they 
were  thought. 


CHAPTER   VI 
MACAULAY  AND  FROUDE 


Admired  by  the  world  and  read  in  many  languages,  Macaulay 
has  been  challenged  by  the  judges  in  the  name  of  historical 
science  and  equity,  of  philosophic  truth  and  depth,  and  of 
literary  delicacy.  And  he  has  been  damaged,  beyond  question, 
upon  every  count  ;  the  Hastings,  the  Bacon,  the  Byron  are  in 
evidence.  Yet  there  Macaulay  stands,  not  to  be  criticised 
away,  for  the  instructed  reader  as  well  as  for  the  larger  public. 
There  is  his  fabric,  with  its  great  shining  surface,  its  solid 
skilful  grandiose  architecture,  its  bold  bright  colouring,  which 
must  be  judged,  in  fairness,  from  a  little  distance  off  ;  it  has  a 
pillar  broken,  a  facade  tarnished  here  and  there  ;  but  the 
thing  stands.  The  History  of  England,  and  the  best  of  the 
Essays,  and  most  of  the  Lives,  and  some  of  the  Speeches,  and 
Macaulay 's  verses  too,  live  by  weight  and  truth  of  substance  as 
well  as  by  their  workmanship.  His  achievement  has  the  unity 
of  a  political  creed  and  temper,  limited  it  may  be,  but  never 
ignoble,  and  inspiring,  though  often  warping,  his  treatment  of 
history  ;  and  it  has  also  the  unity  of  a  style,  not  of  the  rarest 
kind  or  without  blemishes,  but  a  style  which  faces  the  wear 
and  tear  of  an  immense  task,  which  speaks  to  all  men,  and  which, 
at  its  best,  is  brilliant,  classical,  and  pure. 

The  life  of  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay x  (1800-59)  as  a  man 
of  letters  falls  into  three  acts.  The  first  opens  in  1825,  when 
the  curtain  rings  up  and  the  house  fills  in  order  to  applaud  the 
essay  on  Milton.  There  is  a  slender  prologue  to  be  remembered, 
for  the  contributions  to  Knight's  Quarterly  Magazine  (1823-4) 
include  the  dialogue  of  Cowley  and  Milton.  But  the  nine  years 
from  the  appearance  of  the  Milton  to  Macaulay 's  departure  for 
India  in  1834  established  his  name.  The  fruits  were  some 
twenty  essays  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  ten  parliamentary 
speeches  delivered  in  the  years  surrounding  the  Reform  Act. 
Long  ere  he  was  thirty  he  was  taken  to  the  bosom  of  the  Whigs. 
He  was  launched  and  applauded  by  the  old  set  as  the  new  man 


110  MACAULAY 

destined  to  carry  on  their  work .  There  was  a  true  and  vociferous 
mutual  esteem.  Jeffrey,  who,  so  Macaulay  thought,  was,  '  take 
him  for  all  in  all,  more  nearly  an  universal  genius  than  any  man 
of  our  age,'  was  to  live  to  see  the  first  volumes  of  the  History, 
and  to  write,  in  1848  : 

I  have  long  had  a  sort  of  parental  interest  in  your  glory  :  and  it 
is  now  mingled  with  a  feeling  of  deference  to  your  intellectual 
superiority  which  can  only  consort,  I  take  it,  with  the  character 
of  a  female  parent. 

Sydney  Smith,  and  Jeffrey,  and  Praed,  and  Lord  Holland 
— we  must  remember  them  all  to  understand  Macaulay : 
eighteenth -century  men,  sharp  rational  men,  touched  with 
romance  less  rather  than  more  ;  whom  he  outlived,  less 
touched  with  it  than  most  of  them  ;  sitting  through,  we  may 
say,  the  next  imaginative  age,  and  still  less  touched  by  that. 
We  can  listen  to  the  growls  of  Carlyle *  over  the  whole 
'  phenomenon  '  : 

'  an  emphatic,  hottish,  really  forcible  person,  but  unhappily  without 
divine  idea  '  (1832)  ;  '  he  has  more  force  and  emphasis  in  him 
than  any  other  of  my  British  contemporaries  (coevals).  Wants 
the  root"  of  belief,  however.  May  fail  to  accomplish  much.  Let 
us  hope  better  things '  (1833).  '  Essentially  irremediable,  common- 
place nature  of  the  man  '  (1848).  '  No  man  known  to  me  in  present 
or  past  ages  ever  had,  with  a  peaceable  composure  too,  so  infinite 
a  stock  of  good  conceit  of  himself '  .  .  .  '  the  limited  nature  of  his 
world-admired  talent '  (1876). 

The  essays  of  this  early  time  include  some  of  the  most 
truculent,  those  against  James  Mill  and  Sadler,  and  the  versifier 
Robert  Montgomery.  The  attack  on  Croker's  edition  of 
Bos  well  was  deserved,  although,  as  Lockhart  said,  '  it  might 
have  been  done  in  the  style  of  a  gentleman.'  The  Machiavelli 
and  the  Hallam  furnish  clues  to  the  writer's  political  programme 
and  views  of  statecraft,  and  the  six  speeches  on  Reform,  and  that 
on  the  government  of  India,  exhibit  the  same  principles  on  the 
field  of  battle,  and  remain  among  the  best  of  his  writings. 
For  writings  they  are  properly  to  be  called  ;  many  of  them  had 
to  be  recomposed  from  memory,  years  afterwards,  for  the  press. 
From  1831  to  1834  Macaulay 's  activity  is  surprising  :  ten 
essays,  besides  the  speeches,  were  produced.  The  Burleigh,  the 
Hampden,  and  the  Mirabeau,  betray  in  their  substance  the  heat 
and  haste  of  the  process  ;  but  the  celebrated  style,  the  oratory 
of  the  essayist,  rolls  on  without  let  or  strain.  The  first  essay  on 
Chatham  (1834)  shows  Macaulay  triumphing  in  his  true  field  ; 


ESSAYS:    INDIA  111 

and  the  ten  years  that  close  with  the  second  essa}'  constitute  a 
new  and  distinct  phase  in  his  career. 

This  period  covers  his  stay  in  India  (1834-8),  where  he 
presided  over  the  drafting  of  the  Penal  Code  which  is  his 
greatest  contribution  to  the  practical  good  of  mankind  and 
has  earned  the  highest  praise  from  skilled  lawyers.  The 
'  Great  Minute  ' 1  that  determined  the  future  course  of  Indian 
education  in  the  direction  of  English  rather  than  Oriental  studies 
is  also  a  telling  piece  of  literature.  Macaula3T's  case  is  good, 
but  the  sciolism  with  which  he  sweeps  away  as  worthless  all 
Indian  thought  and  religion  is  edifying.  On  his  return  he  wrote 
two  of  his  best  essays,  those  on  Clive  and  on. Sir  William 
Temple  ;  also  the  Warren  Hastings,  which  ought  not  to  add 
to  his  fame  ;  he  dealt  faithfully  with  Gladstone,  he  dashed  at 
Ranke,  he  essayed  a  sketch  of  Frederick  the  Great  ;  and  for 
a  while  threw  himself,  more  happily,  on  pure  literature,  on  the 
scene  that  he  knew  and  loved  best,  on  the  '  Restoration  ' 
dramatists,  on  Addison,  and  on  Madame  D'Arblay.  Meantime 
he  was  again  in  the  Commons,  as  member  for  Edinburgh,  and  as 
War  Minister  under  Melbourne.  The  speeches  on  Ireland  and 
Maynooth,  on  theological  tests  in  Scotland,  and  on  the  Corn 
Laws  form  a  group  in  which  the  old  Whiggism  is  seen  widening 
into  Liberalism,  though  carefully  guarding  itself  against  the 
Radical  tar-brush,  and  remaining,  as  Macaulay  puts  it  gaily  in 
conversation,  '  in  favour  of  war,  hanging,  and  Church  Estab- 
lishments.' The  oration  on  the  gates  of  Somnauth  is  a  display, 
in  a  good  cause,  of  the  old-fashioned  reviewer's  invective  and 
derision.  All  these  speeches  retain  the  literary  character  ;  yet 
we  hear,  on  the  evidence  of  Gladstone,  that  the  House  of 
Commons  was,  listening  to  the  speaker,  afraid  to  '  miss  a  single 
word  that  he  said.'  He  also  found  time  for  the  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome  (1842). 

Happily  for  letters,  he  lost  his  seat  for  Edinburgh  in  1847  ; 
he  was  re-elected  later,  but  letters  had  regained  him  for  good. 
The  last  phase  now  begins,  and  the  most  prosperous  of  all. 
The  original  plan  of  the  History  of  England  is  on  record  in  a 
letter  of  1838  ;  the  first  two  volumes  appeared  in  1848.  The 
essayist,  the  orator,  is  now  also  a  great  historian.  The  instant 
success  of  the  work,  the  honours  heaped  upon  it,  the  editions 
printed  of  it,  and  the  translations  made  from  it,  are  a  familiar 
story.  It  was  the  climax  of  Macaulay 's  immense  and  well- won 
good  fortune,  which  the  very  gods  appeared  not  to  envy.  The 
work,  alas,  could  not  be  finished  according  to  the  scheme. 
The  third  and  fourth  volumes  were  published  in  1855,  the  fifth 


112  MACAULAY 

posthumously  in  1861  ;  Macau  lay,  who  had  been  made- a  peer 
in  1857,  died,  happy  man,  in  the  midst  of  affection,  friendship, 
honours,  and  fame,  two  years  later.  Better  still,  his  powers 
had  never  declined  ;  the  minor  works  of  his  last  five  years 
show,  if  anything,  an  enhanced  skill  in  proportioning,  and  in 
purity  of  form.  The  short  biographies,  written  for  the 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  of  Atterbury,  Bunyan,  Goldsmith, 
Johnson,  and  the  younger  Pitt  may  fairly  be  ranked  for  their 
peculiar  virtues  among  the  masterpieces  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  And  in  the  best  tradition  of  that  age  he  also  wrote 
his  noblest  piece  of  verse,  the  Epitaph  on  a  Jacobite  .(1845), 
which  is  the  crowning  grace  of  the  Whig  historian. 

II 

Macaulay's  tastes  and  character  are  fully  and  fairly  revealed 
in  his  Life  and  Letters,  by  his  nephew,  Sir  George  Otto  Trevelyan. 
This  classical  biography  was  published  in  1876.  The  letters 
and  journals  often  have  the  note  of  Io  Triumphe  !,  of  Macaulay's 
honest  pleasure  in  his  success  and  fame  and  numberless 
editions.  There  is  also  the  note  of  the  Whig  optimist  ;  and 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  what  John  Mitchel,1  reading  the  Essays 
on  shipboard  while  on  his  way  to  a  convict  settlement,  called 

altogether  a  new  thing  in  the  history  of  mankind,  this  triumphant 
glorification  of  a  current  century  upon  being  the  century  it  is. 

All  Macaulay's  virtues  are  there  too,  his  frankness,  his  courage, 
his  integrity,  his  love  of  literature.  There  are  no  half-lights, 
everything  is  explicit  and  self-evident.  But  Macaulay's  mind, 
if  not  mysterious,  is  less  simple  than  may  appear  at  first  sight, 
and  some  of  its  other  features  are  worthy  of  remark. 

We  might  think  of  Macaulay  as  a  humanist,  or  interpreter  of 
classical  thought  and  art,  diverted  by  circumstance  into 
politics.  He  missed  the  narrowing  mill  of  the  public  school, 
but  he  learnt  the  ancient  languages  in  a  free  yet  not  inexact 
fashion,  winning  Cambridge  honours  in  that  field.  Pattison, 
a  good  judge,  said  that  his  '  command  of  literature  was 
imperial,'  and  as  to  classical  literature  the  observation  was  true. 
The  classics  are  alive  to  Macaulay  in  a  measure  that  is  rare 
amongst  those  who  give  their  entire  lives  to  the  study  of  them. 
His  '  thoughts,'  says  his  biographer,  '  were  often  for  weeks 
together  more  in  Latium  and  Attica  than  in  Middlesex  '  ;  he 
was  '  as  familiar  with  his  Lucian,  and  his  Augustan  histories, 
as  other  men  of  letters  are  with  their  Voltaire  and  their  Pepys  '  ; 


HUMANISM  113 

and  he  '  could  not  read  the  De  Corona  even  for  the  twentieth 
time  without  striking  his  clenched  fist,  at  least  once  a  minute, 
on  the  arm  of  his  easy  chair  '  ;  a  description  in  Macaulay's  own 
ringing  concrete  manner.     Everything  in  the  record  confirms 
its  truth.     His  early  writings  in  Knight's  Quarterly  hold  out, 
indeed,  some  hopes  that  are  not  to  be  fulfilled.     The  scraps 
of  the  Roman  Tale  and  the  Athenian  Revels  show  lively  promise 
of  that  gift  for  imaginary  dialogue  which  is  realised  in  the 
Conversation  between  Mr.  Abraham  Cowley  and  Mr.  John  Milton 
Touching   the    Great   Civil    War   (1824).     The   grace   and   un- 
rhetorical  ease  of  this  composition,  qualities  soon  to  be  trampled 
out  in  the  arena,  are  studied,  we  may  think,  from  Plato  or 
Lucian  ;   and  Macaulay's  marginal  notes  on  his  Plato — an  old 
folio  with  Ficino's  Latin  beside  the  Greek — are  full  of  gusto 
and  independence,  though  critically  sometimes  blunt  or  even 
obvious.     To  wish  that  you  had  been  in  the  shoes  of  Polus  and 
had  shown  the  right  way  of  standing  up  to  Socrates  is  an 
aspiration  that  many  must  have  cherished  ;    but  how  would 
the  duel  have  ended  ?     Plato's  criticism  of  the  Whig  theory  of 
the  state,  or  of  the  review  of  Montgomery,  would  have  been 
worth  hearing.     But  nothing  daunted  so  voracious  a  humanist 
as  Macaulay.    The  voyages  to  and  from  India  were  his  holiday, 
the  catalogue  of  the  volumes  that  he  perused  on  board  ship  is 
famous  ;  and  he  had  gone  on  reading  even  while  he  drafted  the 
Penal  Code.    The  fruits  of  this  lifelong  fervour  are  seen  through- 
out his  writings.     There  are  the  pages  in  the  Atlerbury  on  the 
Phalaris  dispute,  and  there  are  endless  casual  allusions  to  the 
ancient  writers.     The  career  of  Cicero  is  surveyed  in  lengthy 
notes,  the   Latin  of   Milton   and  Addison  is   compared,  the 
protests  of  Erasmus  and  Politian  against  purism  in  diction  are 
cited.     The  Greek  tragedians  are  enjoyed  and  discriminated, 
and  Macaulay  overcomes  a  youthful  prejudice,  common  in  his 
time,  against  Euripides  :   '  the  Orestes,'  we  hear,  '  is  one  of  the 
very  finest  plays  in  the  Greek  language.'     His  own  manner, 
we  may  think,  owes  something  to  these  studies .    They  gave  him 
models  of  freedom  and  largeness,  of  lucidity  and  order.     He 
has,  at  his  best,  at  any  rate  the  march  of  a  great  antique  writer. 
Delicacy,   rarity,   the    higher   sense   of    beauty,    are    another 
matter.     His  reading  of  the  ancient  orators  was  not  without  its 
special   influence,  though    his  iterations,  rhetorical   questions 
in  the  form  of  chain-shot,  and  other  devices  which  in  the  long 
run  go  back  to  the  classics,  are  English  and  recent  in  their 
immediate  derivation. 

More  deeply  still  is  Macaulay  moulded,  as  to  his  political 
VOL.  I.  h 


114  MAC  AULA  Y 

ideals,  by  those  of  Athens  and  free  Rome.  This  influence 
lies  behind  all  his  Whig  principles  and  helps  to  animate  them. 
It  was  no  mere  flourish  that  led  him,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  to 
tell  his  father  : 

My  opinions,  good  or  bad,  were  learnt,  not  from  Hunt  and 
Waithman,  but  from  Cicero,  from  Tacitus,  and  from  Milton.  They 
are  opinions  which  have  produced  men  who  have  ornamented  the 
world,  and  redeemed  human  nature  from  the  degradation  of  ages  of 
superstition  and  slavery. 

The  juvenile  tirades  on  liberty  in  the  essay  on  Milton  are  in  the 
same  spirit,  which  was  to  be  deepened  and  trained  by  the 
study  of  history,  which  has  nothing  in  common  with  a  Radical 
or  Jacobin  enthusiasm  for  Brutus,  and  which  was  also  tempered 
by  Macaulay's  robust  faith  in  modernity  and  progress.  Still 
it  is  the  spirit  that  lifts  the  most  eloquent  parts  of  his  speeches, 
like  the  peroration  on  the  government  of  India,  above  common- 
place optimism  into  a  prophetic  strain.  His  debt  to  the 
ancient  historians  he  constantly  acknowledges. 

The  passion  for  humanity,  toleration,  and  the  moderate 
extension  of  political  privilege  was  also  in  Macaulay's  blood, 
and  was  fostered  by  his  rearing.  In  his  father,  Zachary 
Macaulay,  it  was  concentrated  on  one  cause,  the  abolition  of 
negro  slavery,  and  was  inspired  by  a  single-minded  and  narrow, 
though  not  intolerant,  devotion  to  evangelical  Protestantism. 
The  anti-slavery  cause  was  won  during  Macaulay's  youth,  and 
the  enthusiasm  that  had  won  it  widened  in  his  case  into  other 
channels.  The  Protestantism  slipped  off  from  him,  leaving 
little  mark  on  his  character,  which  was,  as  his  biographer  says, 
'  high  and  simple,'  but  was  also  naively  secular.  Macaulay's 
temper  towards  religion  x  must  be  understood.  It  is  external 
rather  than  exactly  hostile  ;  it  is  that  of  the  eighteenth  centu^, 
yet  qualified,  and  in  a  sense  reconciled,  not  by  any  personal 
sympathy,  but  by  the  new  historic  sense,  and  by  a  lively  and 
learned  curiosity.  In  the  first  chapter  of  the  History  Macaulay 
repudiates  the  contempt  felt  during  the  preceding  century  for 
the  cults  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  at  this  point  that  he  parts 
company  with  the  age  of  reason.  Yet  he  remains  outside 
cathedral,  church,  and  chapel  ;  he  is  not  even  in  the  porch  ; 
neither  does  he  throw  stones,  except  for  a  stray  fling  against 
the  abstruser  dogmas,  as  to  which  his  temper  is  agnostic  and 
distrustful.  He  describes  religious  experiences  and  ecclesi- 
astical institutions  with  much  zest  and  colour,  and  often 
powerfully.     Three  times  he  portrays  the  inward  struggles  of 


RELIGION  115 

Bunyan,  and  he  has  made  the  contents  of  Grace  Abounding 
familiar  to  thousands  who  will  never  see  the  book.  He  does 
all  this  in  a  pictorial  way,  and  by  virtue  of  his  power  of  vivid 
memorising  ;  but  he  has  not  the  gift  of  entering  into  the  heart 
of  the  experience.  Once  he  praises  Goethe's  Confessions  of  a 
Fair  Saint  for  a  similar  achievement  ;  but  then  Goethe  per- 
formed it  by  the  force  of  his  deep  and  flexible  dramatic  sym- 
pathy. Macaulay  also,  in  his  essay  on  Ranke,  depicts  in  the 
tone  of  one  who  will  not  underrate  the  enemy,  the  solidity  and 
the  adaptive  genius  of  the  Roman  Church  ;  and,  in  one  of  the 
most  striking  pages  of  the  History,  he  analyses  the  aims  and 
character  of  the  Society  of  Jesus.  His  own  sympathies  as  a 
statesman  were,  allowing  for  many  a  Whiggish  reserve,  with 
the  Church  of  England.  But  neither  the  churches  nor  yet  the 
anti-church  seem  to  have  touched  any  fibre  in  his  heart.  There 
is  no  trace  of  religious  emotion,  any  more  than  of  the  passion 
of  love,  in  the  record  of  Macaulay 's  buoyant,  fervent,  and 
health}7  nature.  Such  a  temper,  no  doubt,  cut  him  off  from 
many  things  ;  but  it  was  a  good  soil  for  intellectual  and  poli- 
tical tolerance,  and  also  for  impartiality  as  an  historian.  He 
tolerates  all  creeds  when  they  cease  to  persecute.  He  is  a 
combatant  for  the  rights  and  franchises  of  dissenter,  Catholic, 
and  Jew.  His  History  is  in  great  measure  the  history  of  the 
progress  of  religious  liberty.  Yet  all  the  time  there  is,  to  quote 
John  Mitchel,  the  anti -Briton,  once  more,  '  a  tone  of  polite, 
though  distant  recognition  of  Almighty  God,  as  one  of  the 
Great  Powers.  .  .  .  British  civilisation  gives  Him  assurances 
of  friendly  relations.' 

But  the  campaign  has  two  sides  to  it.  If  the  churches  are 
to  be  free,  neither  must  they  usurp.  Macaulay  has  his  firm, 
immoveable,  Erastian,  Whig  conception  of  the  sphere  of  govern- 
ment. The  theory  is  set  out,  in  its  bearing  on  ecclesiastical 
affairs,  in  one  of  his  most  closely  argued  and  best  composed 
essays,  Gladstone  on  Church  and  State.  But  he  has  his  own 
version  ;  he  always  Insists  that  the  business  of  the  state  is 
secular,  that  government  is  an  'experimental  science,'  and 
that  it  exists 

for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  peace,  for  the  purpose  of  compelling 
us  to  settle  our  disputes  by  arbitration  instead  of  settling  them  by 
blows,  for  the  purpose  of  compelling  us  to  supply  our  wants  by 
industry  instead  of  supplying  them  by  rapine.  This  is  the  only 
operation  for  which  the  machinery  of  government  is  peculiarly 
adapted,  the  only  operation  which  wise  governments  ever  propose 
to  themselves  as  their  chief  object. 


116  MACAULAY 

At  a  later  date  Macaulay  admits  that  there  exist  some  '  second- 
ary '  aims  of  government,  such  as  education  ;  his  Indian 
experience  brushed  away  some  of  the  objections  to  interference 
which  he  had  shared  alike  with  his  own  school  and  with  the 
philosophic  radicals.  Yet  his  bias  remained  against  inter- 
ference. Nothing  is  more  characteristic,  more  British,  in 
Macaulay  than  his  readiness  to  qualify  mere  doctrine  under 
the  hard  knocks  of  common  sense  and  experience.  He  is 
magnificently,  savingly,  almost  savagely  empirical.  The 
cautious  plea  for  retaining  the  established  church,  which  occurs 
at  the  end  of  his  article  on  Gladstone,  is  a  case  in  point  ;  and 
the  churchman  will  be  better  pleased  with  Macaulay's  con- 
clusion than  with  the  reasonings  that  lead  up  to  it. 

Ill 

The  '  essay,'  as  written  by  Macaulay,  is  something  of  a  new 
invention,  but  its  origins  are  clearly  visible.  It  begins  as  a 
review  of  the  current,  dogmatic,  Edinburgh  kind  :  a  kind  of 
composition  of  which  the  plainest  feature  is  the  insolence  by 
which  its  censure,  its  commendations,  and  its  wit  are  alike 
distinguished.  Macaulay  is  blunter  than  Jeffrey  and  less 
good-natured  than  Sydney  Smith  ;  the  noisy,  hard-fisted 
vulgarity  of  some  of  his  remarks  on  Walpole  and  Boswell 
exceeds  even  their  injustice,  and  some  of  his  pages  only  retain 
the  interest  of  an  obsolete  mode  of  behaviour.  It  was  all  part 
of  the  rough  horseplay  of  the  time,  like  the  practical  jokes  of 
Theodore  Hook,  and  it  was  all  the  worse  for  being  prompted 
by  a  sense  of  duty.  Still,  much  of  Macaulay's  hard  hitting  is 
deserved,  as  in  the  case  of  Croker  ;  and  it  is  at  least  preferable 
to  the  vague  praise,  or  the  cautious  innuendo,  which  now  often 
does  duty  for  criticism.  Moreover,  he  hit  without  malice,  and 
though  his  own  skin  was  thick  he  sometimes  repented  of  his 
violence.  The  worst  was  that  he  had  little  or  no  eye  for  new 
talent  among  his  contemporaries  ;  it  is  rare  to  find  him  en- 
couraging or  saluting  it .  He  was  incapable  of  jealousy,  but  not 
of  indifference .  Sometimes  he  wrote  a  conscientious  and  fairly 
polite  review  of  the  book  in  hand  ;  but  more  frequently,  if  it 
is  not  scarified,  it  is  speedily  dismissed,  and  the  essay  is  a 
discourse  at  length  on  the  topic  of  the  book. 

Did  Macaulay  speak  essays,  or  did  he  write  speeches  ?  In 
any  case,  he  thought  oratorically,  mused  in  antithesis,  dreamed 
in  figures.  His  style  has  many  varieties,  but  its  uniformity 
of  mould  in  essay,  speech,  diary,  and  correspondence  and  jour- 


THE  ESSAYS  117 

nal  shows  that  it  was  natural  to  him  :  as  philosophers  say,  it 
was  the  form  of  his  thought.  There  is  just  the  same  way  of 
stating  the  case,  the  same  elocution  in  the  essay  on  Jewish 
disabilities  as  in  the  speech  on  the  same  subject.  The  only 
difference  lies  in  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  forms  of 
debate.  The  peroration  to  the  Hallam,  written  in  1828,  and 
forecasting  a  serious  change  in  the  franchise,  might  have 
come,  though  graver  in  tone,  from  one  of  the  subsequent 
discourses  on  Reform.  This  oratorical  habit  determines  not 
only  the  style  of  the  Essays,  but  their  clear  structure  and 
efficient  masonry. 

The  proportion  of  political  theory  to  historical  narrative 
varies  greatly  in  these  essays .  The  three  papers  directed  against 
Mill  and  the  utilitarians  are  Macaulay's  chief  adventure  in 
speculation,  and  resolve  themselves  into  an  attack  on  Radical 
theorising  in  the  name  of  Whig  empiricism,  or,  as  Macaulay 
terms  it,  of  induction.  He  makes  many  shrewd  hits  against 
the  doctrinaire,  and  is  careful  to  separate  the  honoured  Bent  ham 
from  his  disciples.  He  treated  Bentham  as  the  author  of  one 
of  the  rejoinders,  and  when  the  veteran  published  a  contra- 
diction he  had  to  retract  somewhat  awkwardly,  explaining  how 
much  more  ferocious  he  would  have  been  if  he  had  not  made 
the  mistake.  He  afterwards  withdrew  some  of  his  rampant 
language  against  James  Mill.  Macaulay,  it  should  be  said,  did 
not  himself  reprint  these  three  essays  ;  they  only  reappeared 
after  both  he  and  Mill  were  dead.  But  the  true  milk  of  the 
Whig  word  can  be  found  in  the  dissertations  on  Hallam  and 
Mackintosh.  The  latter,  with  its  recital  of  the  four  or  five 
chief  blessings  conferred  by  the  Revolution,  is  a  clear  exposi- 
tion of  the  standpoint  afterwards  adopted  in  the  History  of 
England. 

The  historical  essays  are  probably  better  known  than  the 
History,  but  many  of  them  are  far  from  water-tight.  More  than 
one  of  them  has  disseminated  error  and  injustice  in  a  way  that 
no  disproof  or  annotation  can  ever  eradicate.  Macaulay  is  still 
read  by  thousands  who  would  never  look  at  a  note.  How  many 
people  will  always  misconceive  and  mispraise  Bacon,  or  mis- 
condemn  Impey  and  Hastings,  through  Macaulay's  fault  ? 
How  many,  on  the  strength  of  the  History,  will  continue  to 
libel  Penn,  or  to  accept  the  caricature  of  Frederick  William  the 
First  ?  Even  worse,  how  many  of  those  whose  faith  has  been 
upset  by  these  miscarriages  will  then  do  proper  justice  to  the 
admirable  papers  on  Give,  and  Temple,  and  Chatham  ?  The 
best  that  can  be  hoped  is  that,  since  Macaulay's  essays  will 


118  MACAULAY 

always  be  taught  td  the  young  in  the  English  -speaking  lands 
and  in  India,  they  may  be  taught  with  some  critical 
discrimination. 

IV 

The  worthiest  of  Macaulay's  judgements  on  men  of  letters 
concern  the  period  which  in  his  History  he  never  reached,  but 
which  he  knew  best  of  all,  namely,  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  Milton  he  himself  condemned,  in  terms  that  are  even  too 
harsh  ;  the  Dryden,  which  he  did  not  reprint,  need  not  be 
dwelt  upon  ;  it  is  a  slapdash,  unmeasured  composition,  which 
disposes  lightly  of  the  '  absurd  metaphysics '  of  Dante  and 
argues  that  '  the  critical  and  poetical  faculties  are  not  only 
distinct,  but  almost  incompatible.'  And  in  the  History  he  is 
over-hard  on  Dryden's  conversion  to  Rome.  But  the  study 
of  Leigh  Hunt's  edition  of  the  Restoration  and  Revolution 
comedy  is  the  work  of  a  critic,  and  an  example  of  Macaulay  at 
his  happiest.  Lamb's  contention  that  the  world  revealed  by 
Wycherley  and  Congreve  is  a  world  outside  good  and  evil  and 
can  only  be  judged  as  a  kind  of  fairyland,  is  true  for  Lamb 
himself,  and  for  the  few  who  are  like  him  ;  and  his  paradox 
tells  us  more,  as  usual,  than  the  hard  sense  of  others.  But 
Macaulay,  to  the  letter,  is  right  ;  he  hits  the  mark  when  he 
calls,  in  his  History,  the  school  of  Wycherley  hard-hearted  ; 
and  he  has  George  Meredith  on  his  side.  It  is  unfortunate 
that  he  never  reached  Vanbrugh  and  Farquhar,  and  that  while 
speaking,  with  some  exaggeration,  of  Jeremy  Collier,  he  never 
mentions  Etherege  on  the  credit  side  of  the  Restoration  drama. 
But  he  is  just  to  Congreve,  who  has  always  been  more  admired 
than  read  : 

The  wit  of  Congreve  far  outshines  that  of  every  comic  writer,  except 
Sheridan,  who  has  arisen  within  the  last  two  centuries.  .  .  .  The 
dialogue  [in  The  Old  Bachelor]  is  resplendent  with  wit  and  eloquence, 
which  indeed  are  so  abundant  that  the  fool  conies  in  for  an  ample 
share,  and  yet  preserves  a  certain  colloquial  air,  a  certain  inde- 
scribable ease,  of  which  Wycherley  had  given  no  example,  and 
which  Sheridan  in  vain  attempted  to  imitate. 

This  reminds  us  of  Lamb  himself,  or  of  Hazlitt.  The 
Addison,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  masterpiece  of  biography 
rather  than  of  criticism.  Macaulay  sees  Addison,  both  as  a 
man  and  a  writer,  out  of  all  scale,  and  is  capable  of  praising 
him  in  a  strain  that  should  be  reserved  for  Berkeley.  We 
should  never  guess  from  Macaulay  the  commonplace  side  of 


LITERARY  JUDGEMENTS  119 

Addison.  Juster  far,  and  even  more  congenial,  is  the  essay  on 
Madame  D'Arblay  ;  it  is  one  of  those  things  which  need  never 
be  done  again.  Macaulay,  like  Carlyle,  delivered  himself  upon 
Johnson  twice.  Carlyle 's  vindication  of  Boswell's  brains  and 
skill  disposes,  it  may  here  be  repeated,  of  Macaulay 's  crude 
sarcasms  at  Boswell's  expense .  As  to  Johnson  himself,  Macaulay 
loved  him,  and  revelled  in  his  talk,  and  knew  all  the  material 
available,  but  never  penetrated  him.  I  cannot  share  the 
general  admiration  for  the  Life  (1856),  though  it  is  more 
measured  in  tone  than  the  review  of  1831.  It  under-estimates 
Johnson  as  a  writer  ;  it  dwells  on  his  externals  with  a  rough 
and  vulgar  emphasis  ;  and  it  leaves  us  but  half -aware  of  the 
depth  of  his  nature,  and  of  the  wisdom  of  his  heart.  Moreover, 
Macaulay  adopts  without  warrant  Johnson's  own  prejudiced 
and  damning  judgement  on  the  lady  who  'fell  in  love  with  a 
music-master  from  Brescia  '  ;  which  she  had  a  perfect  right 
to  do  without  being  taunted  with  a  '  degrading  passion.'  The 
indelicacy  here  is  on  the  side  of  the  two  robust  critics.  The 
Walpole  is  a  speech  for  the  prosecution,  and  the  cure  for  it  is 
to  read  Walpole's  correspondence.  The  fresh,  keen  independ- 
ence of  judgement  that  lies  under,  or  upon,  the  surface  of 
Walpole's  comments  will  somewhat  amaze  the  reader  who  has 
not  travelled  beyond  Macaulay 's  essay.  In  the  Byron,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  much  sound  sense,  though  not  much 
sympathy  ;  the  picture  of  the  Byronic  hero  is  hardly  over- 
charged ;  and  the  manly  and  biting  sarcasms  levelled  against 
the  ethical  vagaries  of  the  British  public  are  thoroughly  in 
place.  What  has  made  Byron  appeal  to  thousands  out  of 
Britain,  Macaulay  was  too  British  to  appreciate.  Yet  of  his 
work,  Macaulay  justly  concludes  (though  he  forbears  to  specify), 
'we  have  little  doubt  that,  after  the  closest  scrutiny,  there 
will  still  remain  much  that  can  only  perish  with  the  English 
language.' 

Macaulay,  therefore,  merits  anything  but  contempt  as  a 
critic  of  literature.  He  himself  was  modest  about  the  matter, 
and  said  that  to  read  a  page  of  Lessing,  or  of  Goethe's  judge- 
ments on  Hamlet,  filled  him  with  despair.  But  so  good  a  lover 
of  books,  so  good  a  hater,  so  fully  informed  a  mind,  so  ardent 
and  devouring  a  reader,  so  rare  a  memory,  could  not  but  leave 
judgements  of  note  and  value.  The  best  of  them,  perhaps,  do 
not  occur  in  his  essays,  but  are  scattered  through  his  letters  and 
marginal  notes.  The  fiction  of  the  previous  century  he  may  be 
said  to  have  inhabited  rather  than  to  have  judged  in  set  form, 
knowing  as  he  did  Sir  Charles  Grandison  and  Miss  Austen  pretty 


120  MACAULAY 

well  by  heart.  Their  words  and  personages  lived  a  delightful 
second  life  in  the  familiar  talk  of  his  household.  Of  Miss 
Austen  he  was  a  most  faithful  worshipper,  nor  was  his  cult 
ever  tempered  in  later  years.  He  once  thought  of  writing 
a  biography  of  her,  and  unfortunately  never  did  so.  Such 
a  devotion  bespeaks  a  certain  fineness  of  judgement  with 
which  Macaulay  is  seldom  credited.  He  was,  it  has  often 
been  said,  a  man  of  her  period.  He  liked  reason  and  he 
liked  irony  and  satire  and  finish,  and  understood  them  better 
than  he  understood  the  high  poetry  and  inspiration  of  his 
favourite  Milton  and  iEschylus.  He  says  arresting,  though 
not  always  just  or  favourable,  things  about  Ben  Jonson, 
Defoe,  Chesterfield,  Pope,  and  Paul -Louis  Courier.  His 
memory,  no  doubt,  was  greater  than  his  critical  genius  ;  but 
we  must  remember  that  while  literature  was  his  first  love,  his 
refuge  and  his  consolation,  history  and  politics  were  his  chief 
concern. 


The  reaction  against  his  fame  was  bound  to  come,  and  has 
itself  now  begun  to  be  reckoned  with.  A  good  deal  of  the 
adverse  criticism,  it  was  rightly  said  by  Jebb,  is  '  that  species  of 
censure  which  consists  in  blaming  a  man  because  he  is  not 
somebody  else.'  Matthew  Arnold  led  the  onslaught,  with  his 
cry  that  Macaulay  was  a  brilliant  rhetorician  and  never  got 
to  the  '  real  truth  of  things.'  But  of  what  things  ?  He  got  to 
the  truth  of  some  things  for  which  Matthew  Arnold  cared  little, 
for  he  wrote  a  chapter  in  the  history  of  liberty.  The  same 
critic,  however,  did  justice  to  the  Lives,  and  finally  called 
Macaulay  a  great  man  of  letters.  A  snarl  of  Mark  Pattison's 
goes  deeper  : 

He  is  in  accord  with  the  average  sentiment  of  orthodox  and 
stereotyped  humanity  on  the  relative  values  of  the  objects  and 
motives  of  human  endeavour.  And  this  commonplace  materialism 
is  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  popularity,  and  one  of  the  qualities  which 
guarantee  that  that  popularity  will  be  enduring. 

This  comment  is  more  serious  ;  but  is  it  true  ?  It  is  not 
without  foundation.  Macaulay,  in  his  psean  on  the  national 
improvement,  makes  much  of  the  increase.of  comfort,  security, 
and  prosperity  during  the  last  two  centuries.  Here  he  shows 
his  characteristic  '  complacency,'  which  is  part  of  his  cheerful 
faith  in  'progress.'  He  is  eminently  'on  the  side  of  the 
moderns  '  in  that  department ;    and  in  progress,  of  course, 


INDICTMENTS  121 

Britain  leads  the  way.  There  is  a  certain  streak  of  'materi- 
alism/ no  doubt,  in  all  this,  and  special  pleading  in  mitiga- 
tion is  needless.  But  we  must  remember  that  Macaulay 
is  thinking  of  the  welfare  of  the  people,  of  the  mass  of 
'  orthodox  and  stereotyped  humanity,'  who  had  not  all 
that  time  enjoyed  security,  comfort,  and  other  gross 
advantages. 

In  the  third  chapter  of  the  History  he  describes  the  bad 
roads  of  1660,  and  adds  that  '  every  improvement  of  the  means 
of  locomotion  benefits  mankind  morally  and  intellectually  as 
well  as  materially,'  and  that  it  '  tends  to  remove  national  and 
provincial  antipathies,  and  to  bind  together  all  the  branches  of 
the  great  human  famiiy.'  This  may  be  materialism,  but  it  is 
true  and  philosophical.  And  if  the  statesman  who  promotes 
these  improvements  is  to  be  honoured,  the  historian  who 
celebrates  them  is  within  his  rights.  It  would  be  truer  to  say 
that  Macaulay  is  apt  to  interpret  all  intellectual  advance  in 
terms  of  applied  science,  or  of  invention  '  for  the  relief  of  man's 
estate  '  ;  and  that,  apart  from  the  great  region  of  legal  and 
constitutional  reform,  he  has  not  much  ear  for  the  rarer 
phenomena  of  the  human  spirit.  We  must  go  to  others  for 
the  history  of  impalpable  developments.  His  odd  mixture, 
already  noticed,  of  keen  interest  and  thorough -going  externality 
in  the  article  of  thought  and  religion  marks  this  obvious 
limitation.  Hence  Carlyle,  while  granting  Macaulay  to  be  '  a 
really  emphatic,  forcible  person,'  adds  that  he  is  '  unhappily 
without  divine  idea.'  Certainly  the  prophetic  or  mystical  note, 
the  note  of  Burke,  is  rare  in  Macaulay  ;  but  there  is  something 
of  it  in  his  speech  on  India,  which  may  well  seem  to-day  (1920) 
one  of  his  most  prescient  utterances,  and  which  shows  his 
eloquence  at  its  best. 

The  destinies  of  our  Indian  empire  are  covered  with  thick  dark- 
ness. It  is  difficult  to  form  any  conjecture  as  to  the  fate  reserved 
for  a  state  which  resembles  no  other  in  history,  and  which  forms 
by  itself  a  separate  class  of  political  phenomena.  The  laws  which 
regulate  its  growth  and  its  decay  are  still  unknown  to  us.  It  may 
be  that  the  public  mind  of  India  may  expand  under  our  system 
till  it  has  outgrown  that  system  ;  that  by  good  government  we 
may  educate  our  subjects  into  a  capacity  for  better  government ; 
that,  having  become  instructed  in  European  knowledge,  they  may, 
in  some  future  age,  demand  European  institutions.  Whether  such 
a  day  will  ever  come  I  know  not.  But  never  will  I  attempt  to 
avert  or  to  retard  it.  Whenever  it  comes,  it  will  be  the  proudest 
day  in  English  history.  To  have  found  a  great  people  sunk  in  the 
lowest  depths  of  slavery  and  superstition,  to  have  so  ruled  them  as 


122  MACAULAY 

to  have  made  them  desirous  and  capable  of  all  the  privileges  of 
citizens,  would  indeed  be  a  title  to  glory  all  our  own.  The  sceptre 
may  pass  away  from  us.  Unforeseen  accidents  may  derange  our 
most  profound  schemes  of  policy.  Victory  may  be  inconstant  to 
our  arms.  But  there  are  triumphs  which  are  followed  by  no 
reverse.  There  is  an  empire  exempt  from  all  natural  causes  of 
decay.  Those  triumphs  are  the  pacific  triumphs  of  reason  over 
barbarism  ;  that  empire  is  the  imperishable  empire  of  our  arts 
and  our  morals,  our  literature  and  our  laws. 

'  Our  arts  '  and  '  our  laws  ' — there,  you  may  say,  speaks  the 
irrepressible  Whig  and  Briton  ;  and  the  Indian  faiths  are 
superstition  ;  still,  to  read  that  passage  takes  away  the  taste 
left  in  our  mouth  b}'  the  detractors  of  Macaulay.  For  a 
k  materialist,'  for  a  '  Philistine,'  and  for  a  '  rhetorician,'  it  is 
pretty  well. 

VI 

Macaulay 's  much  quoted  remark,  in  reference  to  his  History, 
that  he  wished  to  '  produce  something  which  shall  for  a  few 
days  supersede  the  last  fashionable  novel  on  the  tables  of 
young  ladies,'  can  be  misread  at  his  expense,  but  it  is  explained 
by  a  passage  in  his  essay  on  History  (1828),  in  which  he  says 
that  '  a  truly  great  historian  would  reclaim  those  materials 
which  the  novelist  has  appropriated.'  Scott,  coming  in  the 
wake  of  the  historians,  had  '  constructed  out  of  their  gleanings 
works  which,  even  considered  as  histories,  are  scarcely  less 
valuable  than  theirs.'  The  ideal  course  was  to  unite  the  living 
pictorial  interest  of  Scott  with  the  intellectual  interest  of  Hume 
and  Clarendon.  Macaulay,  then,  sketches  a  history  of  England 
from  the  time  of  Chaucer  to  that  of  Hudibras  as  he  would  desire 
it  to  be  planned  out.  He  adds,  as  though  in  forecast  of  his 
future  work,  that  the  loyalist,  the  Puritan,  and  the  philo- 
sophic republican  would  all  '  enter  into  the  representation,' 
which  would  not  contain  merely  battles  and  debates. 

However,  another  sentence  redresses  the  balance.  A  history 
is  not  to  be  exclusively  a  stirring  pageant  or  to  resemble  a 
novel  that  should  happen  to  be  true  :  for 

the  history  of  the  government,  and  the  history  of  the  people,  would 
be  exhibited  in  that  mode  in  which  alone  they  can  be  exhibited 
justly,  in  inseparable  conjunction  and  intermixture. 

Macaulay  in  his  own  way  really  achieved  this  aim.  He  did  not 
indeed  complete  his  design  of  'tracing  the  progress  of  useful 
and  ornamental  arts,'  or  of  '  describing  the  changes  of  literary 


THE  HISTORY  123 

taste,'  or  of  noting  '  the  revolutions  which  have  taken  place  in 
dress,  furniture,  repasts,  and  public  amusements,'  though  some 
of  these  matters  are  skilfully  panelled  into  the  History.  But 
he  keeps  the  balance  between  the  constitutional  and  the  living 
aspects  of  the  story  better  than  his  successor,  John  Richard 
Green,  whose  Short  History,  with  all  its  life  and  rapidity,  lacks 
the  single  and  dominating  purpose  which  holds  Macaulay's 
great  fragment  together.  The  original  plan  is  given  in  a  letter 
of  July  20,  1838.  The  Revolution  was  to  be  the  starting-point  : 
but 

How  far  I  shall  bring  the  narrative  down  I  have  not  determined. 
The  death  of  George  the  Fourth  would  be  the  best  halting -place. 
The  History  would  then  be  an  entire  view  of  all  the  transactions 
which  took  place,  between  the  Revolution  which  brought  the 
Crown  into  harmon}'  with  the  Parliament,  and  the  Revolution 
which  brought  the  Parliament  into  harmony  with  the  nation. 

There  is  the  Whig  theory  of  our  history  in  a  sentence,  and  we 
see  how  firm  a  backbone  Macaulay's  book  would  have  had. 
Even  as  it  stands,  it  is  plain  that  his  talent  was  by  no  means 
confined,  as  is  sometimes  implied,  to  the  representation  of  the 
concrete.  His  mastery  of  the  abstract  principles  involved, 
though  doubtless  legal  rather  than  properly  speaking  specula- 
tive, was  great.  A  page  of  Hobbes,  or  of  John  Stuart  Mill, 
contains  indeed  more  pure  thinking  than  all  Macaulay's  dis- 
quisitions ;  we  feel  at  once  that  we  are  in  the  free  air  of  political 
philosophy.  Still,  on  the  purely  constitutional  side  he  is 
strong,  and  on  that  side  he  perceives,  and  impressively  exhibits, 
the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  national  life.  On  the  side  of 
thought  and  art  he  does  not  do  so.  He  has  indeed  much  to 
say  of  the  manners  of  the  Puritan,  on  the  Royal  Society,  on 
the  influence  of  French  literature,  on  Dryden,  and  Burnet,  and 
Baxter.  Yet  these  persons  and  phenomena,  though  sketched 
with  a  rapid  and  arresting  brilliancy,  are  mostly  viewed  from 
without ,  and  a  certain  sense  of  void  haunts  us  through  Macaulay's 
clamorous  and  coloured  pages.  This  is  only  to  note  the  bouiiv 
daries  of  his  genius.  Within  his  noble  and  ample  territory, 
what  motion,  what  variety,  what  splendour,  what  a  power  of 
marshalling  !  The  History,  if  we  consider  it  both  as  a  work  of 
art,  and  for  its  weight  and  worth  of  substance,  is  the  only  great 
production  of  the  kind  since  Gibbon  that  has  come  from  the 
hand  of  an  Englishman.  Macaulay  himself,  who  was  modest 
under  all  his  self-confidence,  felt  that  he  could  not  emulate 
Thucji'dides,  and  did  not  overrate  his  own  performance. 


124  MACAULAY 


VII 


In  his  art  of  construction  and  arrangement  he  has  something 
in  common  with  the  greatest  models.  Historical  writing  con- 
sists of  narrative,  description,  and  analysis  ;  or,  more  strictly, 
of  long  steady  marches  and  judicious  pauses  for  relief.  The 
march  is  the  narrative  ;  the  analysis  calls  a  halt  ;  the  descrip- 
tive matter  either  moves  or  stands  still,  or  both,  as  it  may 
happen.  Macaulay  is  a  master,  though  not  equally  a  master, 
in  each  of  these  departments,  as  well  as  in  the  art  of  ordering 
and  proportioning.  His  art  has  been  styled  mechanical ;  but 
few  historians  of  any  school  have  approached  it.  His  battles, 
his  pageants,  his  debates,  his  discussions  of  principle,  his 
portraits,  and  his  reviews  of  life  and  manners,  are  disposed  with 
an  enviable  skill.  It  is  true  that  his  transitions  are  often 
abrupt ;  and,  if  any  element  bulks  too  large  and  is  of  smaller 
permanent  value  than  the  rest,  it  is  his  lengthy  expositions  of 
the  Whig  philosophy,  and  his  imaginary  speeches  and  pleas 
on  either  side,  and  summaries  of  public  opinion.  These,  he 
tells  us,  are  gathered  from  a  thousand  sources,  of  which  he 
only  specifies  a  few  ;  but  they  are  composed,  on  a  convention 
as  obvious  as  that  of  Thucydides,  by  an  imaginary  Macaulay  of 
the  year  1689.  They  usually  take  the  form  of  a  speech  full  of 
dilemmas,  rhetorical  questions,  and  contemptuous  illustrations, 
exactly  in  his  own  style  of  oratory.  They  are  wonderful 
advocacy,  and  their  conclusions  may  be  sound  ;  but  they  are 
made  up  ;  and  to  check  them,  it  would  be  necessary  to  know 
as  much  as  Macaulay.  But  that  difficulty  applies  to  the  whole 
substance  of  his  History,  and  I  am  now  speaking  of  its  art. 

Among  his  narratives  and  descriptions  it  is  needful  to 
distinguish.  In  his  passion  for  a  clinching  detail  he  often 
sins,  not  so  much  against  the  '  dignity  of  history,'  for  which  he 
professes  little  respect,  as  against  fitness  of  scale  and  colouring. 
When  we  hear  that  at  the  trial  of  Hastings  '  Mrs.  Sheridan  was 
carried  out  in  a  fit '  ;  or,  beside  the  deathbed  of  Charles  the 
Second,  that  '  a  loathsome  volatile  salt,  extracted  from  human 
skulls,  was  forced  into  his  mouth  '  ;  we  feel  that  Macaulay  is 
not  selecting  in  the  spirit  of  a  great  historical  painter,  or  even 
in  the  spirit  of  Hogarth.  Hogarth  crowds  every  corner  with 
significance,  but  the  whole  effect  is  harmonious  ;  Macaulay,  as 
though  on  principle,  teases  us  with  detail.  This  is  but  one 
species  of  the  continual,  thudding  emphasis  which  ends  by 
weakening  the  attention  it  is  meant  to  quicken.  Macaulay, 
in  the  long  run,  fatigues  us  more  than  many  duller  writers. 


ART  OF  THE  HISTORY  125 

But  for  all  that  he  is  one  of  the  great  masters  of  narrative,  and 
the  world  with  a  sound  instinct  has  fixed  upon  his  best  things. 
The  scenes  of  Glencoe,  Londonderry,  and  Sedgemoor,  the  last 
hours  of  William  and  Mary,  the  acquittal  of  the  bishops,  the 
Darien  bubble,  the  detention  of  James  at  Sheerness,  are  perfect 
in  their  own  kind  of  art,  and  only  lack,  what  the  roughest  page 
of  Carlyle  possesses,  the  note  of  spiritual  genius,  and  the 
background  of  the  '  immensities  and  eternities.'  Yet  Macaulay, 
at  his  best,  stirs  the  blood,  and  he  commands  not  only  the 
heroic  strain  but  a  simple  and  manly  pathos,  of  which  his 
account  of  the  deathbed  of  Charles  the  Second  is  an  example. 

His  elaborate  '  characters,'  though  always  brilliant,  are  less 
satisfactory.  Beside  Clarendon  (not  to  speak  again  of  Carlyle) 
he  seems,  with  all  his  acuteness,  rhetorical  and  heavy-handed. 
His  Halifax,  his  William,  his  Tillotson,  his  Jeffreys,  apart  from 
all  questions  of  equity,  are  aggregations  of  qualities  rather  than 
living  men.  He  pursues  them  with  epithets  of  eulogy  or 
abuse  ;  he  will  not  let  them  simply  show  themselves  in  act  ; 
they  are  good  or  bad  in  extremes,  like  the  characters  of  Charles 
Dickens  ;  and  he  seems  to  think  that  the  subtleties  of  character 
are  exhibited  by  an  array  of  antitheses  and  contradictory 
attributes.  The  more  he  explains  away  Halifax  or  Danby  the 
less  we  seem  to  understand  them.  He  succeeds  best  with  his 
secondary  figures,  like  Portland  or  Schomberg,  who  are  cast  on 
plainer  lines. 

He  excels  most  historians  in  the  felicity  of  his  interludes. 
His  touches  of  landscape,  which  are  rare,  have  the  same  quality 
as  those  in  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Borne  ;  they  are  not,  like 
Carlyle 's,  full  of  deep  poetic  beauty  ;  but  they  are  true  and 
simple,  and  are  often  a  record  of  things  seen.  As  Adolphus 
remarks  of  Scott,  '  the  images  which  he  does  supply  are  placed 
directly  under  our  view,  in  a  full  noonday  light.'  So  Macaulay 
describes  the  Highlands  and  Glencoe,  Holland  or  the  Boyne, 
always  seeing,  however,  with  his  memory  as  much  as  with  his 
eyes  : 

That  bright  and  tranquil  stream,  the  boundary  of  Louth  and 
Meath,  having  flowed  many  miles  by  green  banks  crowned  by  modem 
palaces,  and  by  the  ruined  keeps  of  old  Norman  barons  of  the 
Pale,  is  here  about  to  mingle  with  the  sea.  ...  On  the  Meath  side 
of  the  Boyne,  the  ground,  still  all  corn,  grass,  flowers,  and  foliage, 
rises  with  a  gentle  swell  to  an  eminence  surmounted  by  a  con- 
spicuous tuft  of  ash-trees  which  overshades  the  ruined  church  and 
desolate  graveyard  of  Donore. 

Nothing  is  more  like  Macaulay  than  his  equal  and  impartial 


126  MACAULAY 

delight  in  the  'ruined  keeps'  and  in  the  'modern  palaces.' 
It  is  this  that  separates  him  from  Scott,  who  cares  less  about 
the  fruits  of  civilisation.  But  Macaulay  is  at  his  best  when  he 
is  not  thus  distracted.  At  St.  Germains,  or  in  St.  Peter's 
Chapel,  he  is  alone  with  the  past,  and  he  masses  and  orders  his 
thronging  recollections  into  a  noble  picture.  Another  kind  of 
relief  is  given  by  the  numberless  stories  that  he  tells  by  the  way. 
In  his  account  of  William's  amnesties  he  inserts  a  page  on  the 
Earl  of  Clancarty,  who  might  '  furnish  a  good  subject  to  a 
novelist  or  a  dramatist '  ;  and  the  subject  is  certainly  worthy  of 
Thackeray.  The  visit  of  Peter  the  Great,  '  in  the  same  week 
in  which  Whitehall  perished,'  supplies  a  more  important  episode. 
This  is  the  regular  method  of  the  History,  and  it  can  be  trusted 
to  carry  us  through  the  tale,  itself  often  as  dull  and  confusing  as 
a  kaleidoscope,  of  ministerial  shifting*  and  rascalities.  Lord 
Acton,1  who  judges  Macaulay  on  some  counts  with  great 
severity,  adds  that  '  all  this  does  not  prevent  him  from  being 
one  of  the  greatest  of  historians,'  and  that  '  in  description,  not 
in  narrative,  I  think  he  is  quite  the  first  of  all  writers  of  history.' 

VIII 

As  to  the  main  question  whether  Macaulay,  after  all,  can  be 
trusted,  the  historians  themselves  have  so  far  given  no  per- 
fectly distinct  answer,  and  it  is  not  for  others  to  be  dogmatic. 
There  has  been  much  criticism  in  three  directions.  First  of 
all,  he  is  charged  with  inaccuracies  of  fact  which  have  led  him 
into  gross  misjudgements  of  character,  and  into  circulating, 
though  in  good  faith,  historical  libels.  His  immense  authority 
with  the  public  makes  this  question  more  serious.  Nor  have 
the  professional  historians  thus  far  dealt  with  it  as  a  whole. 
No  one  has  done  for  Macaulay  what  Mr.  Bury  has  done  for 
Gibbon.  No  one  duly  versed  in  the  period  has  gone  over  the 
whole  ground  in  order  to  show,  first  of  all,  how  far  Macaulay  dealt 
thoroughly  and  faithfully  with  the  material  at  his  command, 
and  then  how  far  he  has  been  corrected  by  later  knowledge. 
Still  less  has  any  one  rewritten  his  story  on  the  same  scale, 
embodying  the  results  of  later  criticism.  But  both  the  History 
and  the  Essays  have  been  severely  riddled,2  here  and  there. 
The  pictures  of  Penn,  of  Marlborough,  and  also  of  William 
admittedly  require  modification.  The  account  of  Scottish 
affairs  is  in  the  same  plight.  The  biographical  part  of  the 
Bacon  was  dissected  in  James  Spedding's  Evenings  with  a 
Reviewer   (1848),  and   the   philosophical   part    has   long   been 


GENERALISATION  127 

given  to  the  lions.  Impey's  legal  conduct  of  the  trial  of  Nun- 
comar,  and  also  his  motives,  were  vindicated  by  Sir  James 
Fit  z james  Stephen  in  1885,  and  the  true  story  of  the  Rohilla 
war  was  told  by  Sir  John  Strachey  in  1892.  All  this  must 
shake  the  confidence  of  the  layman  in  Macaulay.  Much  too  has 
been  written,  though  in  a  less  conclusive  style,  about  his  general 
handling  of  evidence. 

The  difficulty  here  is  that  he  does  not  fully  give  his  evidence. 
He  has  many  footnotes  ;  he  read  and  dug  immensely  ;  his 
fabulous  memory,  though  it  must  have  saved  him  some  think- 
ing, was  mostly  precise  ;  but  his  method,  which  is  a  large  and 
lordly  one,  almost  precludes  him  from  supplying  the  pieces  de 
conviction.  His  ideas  on  the  position  of  parties  in  the  reign 
of  William  have,  he  says,  been 

derived  not  from  any  single  work,  but  from  thousands  of  forgotten 
tracts,  sermons,  and  satires  :  in  fact,  from  a  whole  literature  which 
is  mouldering  in  old  libraries. 

So  he  builds  up  the  material,  not  into  a  scientific  demon- 
stration, but  into  a  picture  or  panorama,  by  force  of  intuition, 
and  perhaps  by  the  kind  of  '  castle -building  '  that  he  described 
to  his  sister  Margaret  : 

The  past  is  in  my  mind  soon  constructed  into  a  romance.  With 
a  person  of  my  turn  the  minute  touches  are  of  as  great  interest, 
and  perhaps  greater,  than  the  most  *  important  events.  .  .  .  Pre- 
cision in  dates,  the  day  or  hour  in  which  a  man  was  born  or  died, 
becomes  absolutely  necessary.  A  slight  fact,  a  sentence,  a  word, 
are  of  importance  in  my  romance. 

It  would  be  most  unfair  to  charge  Macaula}-  with  spinning  the 
history  of  England  into  a  romance.  But  the  same  baffling 
mixture  of  minute  detail  and  imaginative  construction  is 
evident.  One  critic  speaks  of  Macaulay's  '  audacity  in  out- 
running tangible  evidence,'  another  says  that  his  'extreme 
precision  and  his  excessive  emphasis  '  cany  him  often  '  much 
further  than  can  be  justified  by  an}-  authority.'  This  seems  to 
hit  the  mark.  We  have  to  be  careful  with  Macaulay's  habitual 
plurals  ;  we  do  not  know  on  how  many  cases  they  are  founded. 
Perhaps,  if  challenged,  he  could  have  rolled  out  an  overwhelming 
avalanche  of  examples  to  make  good  ;  but  perhaps  not. 

Alarmists  predicted  that  the  wealthiest  and  most  enlightened 
kingdom  in  Europe  would  be  reduced  to  the  state  of  those  barbarous 
societies  in  which  a  mat  is  bought  with  a  hatchet,  and  a  pair  of 
moccasins  with  a  piece  of  venison. 


128  MACAULAY 

How  many  persons,  and  who,  made  this  lively  remark  in  the 
year  1696  ?  Six  years  after  Macaulay's  death  appeared 
Lecky's  Rationalism  in  Europe.  Macaulay  had  taught  the 
fashion  of  marshalling  concrete  illustrations,  and  Lecky 
employs  it  ;  but  the  new  method  has  appeared  ;  there  is  a 
voucher  for  every  statement,  nor  is  the  vividness  of  the  picture 
abated. 

Macaulay  has  been  assailed,  thirdly,  on  the  broad  ground  of 
political  partiality  and  unfairness.  So  far  as  the  charge  may  be 
true,  he  is  condemned  out  of  his  own  mouth  ;  for  he  denounces 
'  the  error  of  judging  the  past  by  the  present,'  says  that  it  is 
'  pernicious  in  a  historian,'  and  adds  that  it  '  perpetually  infects 
the  speculations  of  writers  of  the  liberal  school  when  they 
discuss  the  transactions  of  an  earlier  age  '  {History,  ch.  vii.). 
But  the  accusation  has  been  overdone.  In  one  sense  it  would 
have  been  wrong  and  impossible  for  Macaulay  not  to  '  judge 
the  past  by  the  present.'  He  certainly  saw  1688  and  1832  in 
the  light  of  one  another.  The  middle  class  franchise,  as  he 
viewed  it,  was  the  long  result  of  time,  of  the  beneficent  process 
that  had  begun  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  before.  Such  was 
the  Whig  view  of  history,  and  Macaulay  frankly  pleads  for  it. 
But  the  Whigs  as  a  body,  and  Whig  individuals,  are  plentifully 
castigated  ;  and  the  writer  has  no  little  dramatic  and  imagina- 
tive sympathy  with  Tory  and  Jacobite.  He  is  indeed  over- 
violent  with  James,  and  over-civil  with  William.  But  it  has 
been  acutely  remarked  that  while  Macaulay  may  be  unfair  to 
Marlborough  or  Shaftesbury,  '  his  diatribes  against  them  are 
quite  independent  of  party  spirit.'  And  his  strong  language, 
whether  merited  or  not,  is  often  due  to  his  intense  realisation 
of  the  scene,  in  which  he  lives  in  fancy  ;  sharing  its  passions 
like  a  man,  and  not  simply  watching  them  like  a  naturalist. 
Once  he  records  '  an  event  which,  even  at  this  distance  of  time, 
can  hardly  be  related  without  a  feeling  of  vindictive  pleasure.' 
The  event  is  the  arrest  of  Jeffreys .  Such  a  spirit  may  sometimes 
lead  to  what  has  been  called  '  blacking  the  chimney '  ;  but  it 
adds  immensely  to  the  liveliness  of  the  story. 

IX 

Turn  from  a  plain  natural  writer  of  the  higher  kind  like 
Goldsmith,  or  from  a  master  of  the  more  intricate  music  of 
prose,  to  the  Warren  Hastings  or  the  chapter  on  the  state  of 
England  in  1685,  and  you  may  feel  that  Macaulay's  sentences 
are  fed  out  of  a  machine  :   a  wonderful  machine,  because  it  is 


TECHNIQUE  129 

the  very  mind  of  the  man.  Explore  as  you  will  his  letters  or 
journals,  or  the  reports  of  his  unprepared  talk,  and  you  will 
still  come  on  those  sentences.  Except,  that  is,  when  Macaulay 
is  imitating  a  past  style,  as  he  does  in  the  dialogue  of  Cowley  and 
Milton  ;  a  piece  that  promises  fair,  as  I  have  observed  ;  but 
it  is  a  pastiche,  and  the  manner  is  not  natural  to  him.  The 
college  essay  on  William  the  Third  may  be  consulted  in  the  Life 
to  see  how  soon  Macaulay  wrote  in  the  style  that  is  now  so 
familiar.  And,  as  a  tune  which  has  arrested  all  who  can  read 
our  language,  it  deserves  attention.  It  is  sometimes,  no  doubt, 
a  very  ugly  one  : 

Logan  defended  the  accused  governor  with  great  ability  in  prose. 
For  the  lovers  of  verse,  the  speeches  of  the  managers  were  burlesqued 
in  Simpkin's  letters.  It  is,  we  are  afraid,  indisj^utable  that  Hastings 
stooped  so  low  as  to  court  the  aid  of  that  malignant  and  filthy 
baboon  John  Williams,  who  called  himself  Anthony  Pasquin.  It 
was  necessary  to  subsidise  such  allies  largely.  The  private  hoards 
of  Mrs.  Hastings  had  disappeared.  It  was  said  that  the  banker 
to  whom  they  had  been  entrusted  had  failed. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  this  atomic  style  everywhere  in  Macaulay. 
It  seems  to  be  his  own  ;  and  its  peculiarity  is  the  premature 
full -stoppage  of  every  sentence  in  what  ought,  considering  the 
energy  of  the  start,  to  have  been  merely  its  mid-career.  The 
aim  is  to  leave  the  slowest  member  of  a  large  audience  with  no 
excuse  for  misunderstanding. 

Yet  this  is  only  the  style  in  its  lowest  terms.  There  is,  it  is 
true,  a  certain  framework  of  rhetoric  and  rhythm,  not  easy  to 
state  technically,  and  not  be  defined  by  any  tricks  or  figures, 
but  unmistakeable,  out  of  which  Macaulay  seldom  escapes. 
It  has  the  merit  of  being  wholly  natural  to  him  ;  it  is  not  a 
thing  learnt  or  affected,  though  it  may  be  thought  by  the 
enemy  to  be  all  the  more  fatal  for  that.  But,  within  that  frame- 
work, it  is  one  of  the  most  skilful,  and  also  of  the  most  varied,  of 
styles.  For  one  thing,  its  abruptness  of  effect  is  often  a  mere 
matter  of  punctuation.  The  short  snappy -seeming  clauses  arc 
not  really  isolated,  but  unite  into  an  harmonious  group  that 
satisfies  the  ear,  as  a  whole,  and  only  as  a  whole  ;  they  are  the 
minor  ups  and  downs  in  a  long  rolling  wave  : 

The  Chancellor  fell  down  with  a  great  ruin.  The  seal  was  taken 
from  him  :  the  Commons  impeached  him  :  his  head  was  not  safe  : 
he  fled  from  the  country  :  an  Act  was  passed  which  doomed  him  to 
perpetual  exile  :  and  those  uho  had  assailed  and  undermined  him 
began  to  struggle  for  th    fragments  of  his  power. 

VOL.  I.  I 


130  MACAULAY 

The  sentence,  though  its  components  are  sharply  marked  off, 
is  a  musical  unit  gradually  swelling  in  cadence.  The  usual 
mechanism  of  Macaulay's  sentence  is  of  this  kind,  consisting  of 
a  series  of  parallel  simple  sentences  ;  or  else,  so  far  as  it  is 
further  organised,  the  subordinate  members  fall  into  further 
pairs  and  parallels,  marked  by  antithesis  of  language  coupled 
with  repetition  of  rhythm.  This  pedantic  statement  of  the 
case  must  be  pardoned,  as  it  applies  to  much  of  Macaulay's 
prose,  which  admits,  nevertheless,  of  great  internal  variety. 
His  most  obvious  device  is  that  of  the  echoed  word  or  phrase, 
which  is  used  to  point  the  antithesis  : 

The  war  between  wit  and  Puritanism  soon  became  a  war  between 
wit  and  moralit}'.  The  hostility  excited  by  a  grotesque  caricature 
of  virtue  did  not  spare  virtue  herself.  Whatever  the  canting  Round- 
head had  regarded  with  reverence  was  insulted.  Whatever  he  had 
proscribed  was  favoured.  Because  he  had  been  scrupulous  about 
trifles,  all  scruples  were  treated  with  derision.  ...  To  that  sancti- 
monious jargon  which  was  his  Shibboleth,  was  opposed  another 
jargon  not  less  absurd  and  much  more  odious. 

Another  constant  habit  is  the  clinching  of  the  argument  by 
the  concrete  instance,  very  often  in  the  form  of  a  name,  or,  for 
choice,  of  a  pair  of  names,  which  ring  out  like  a  gong  at  the  end 
of  the  sentence.  In  a  single  page  of  the  History,  too  long  to 
quote,  we  come  upon  the  following  couplets  :  '  Lords  of  the 
Bedchamber  and  Captains  of  the  Guards  '  ;  '  Jane  Grey  and 
Lucy  Hutchinson  '  ;  '  Clelia  and  the  Grand  Cyrus  '  ;  '  the 
whole  Greek  literature  from  Homer  to  Photius  '  ;  '  Raleigh  and 
Falkland  '  ;  '  Pitt  and  Fox,  Windham  and  Grenville  '  ; 
'  Sophocles  or  Plato.' 

I  must  not  discharge  a  notebook  on  the  reader,  who  will 
easily  multiply,  if  need  be,  the  list  of  Macaulay's  weapons  in 
discourse .  But  it  is  well  to  notice  that  his  aim  was  not  merely 
lucidity.  He  was  pleased,  we  know,  when  the  printer's  reader 
could  only  find  one  sentence  in  the  History  that  required  to  be 
read  over  twice.  But  his  other  aim,  in  spite  of  all  staccato  or 
hammering  effects,  was,  above  all,  smoothness  to  the  ear,  and 
this  aim  he  attains.  His  rhythm,1  like  his  language,  is  easy  and 
effortless  ;  if  we  are  sometimes  forced  to  think  of  the  piston- 
rod,  it  is  a  rod  well-oiled  that  plays  powerfully,  swiftly,  and 
steadily.  Macaulay's  style,  whatever  may  be  said  against  it, 
carries  his  readers  though  their  long  journey. 

His  actual  diction  is  so  pure  and  sound  that  it  can  almost 
be  appealed  to  as  authoritative.     Herein  he  ranks  with  Addison, 


THE  LAYS  131 

Hume,  and  Goldsmith.  He  rarely  uses  an  obsolete  or  doubtful 
word  except  when  he  quotes  it  from  the  period  that  he  is 
chronicling.  '  Dismission  '  for  '  dismissal '  is  an  apparent 
exception,  but  it  is  an  eighteenth-century  form,  and  technical. 
'  The  Chancellor  instantly  fired  '  :  'an  active  search  was 
making  '  after  Roman  Catholic  priests  :  these  are  stray 
examples.  In  his  simpler  and  higher  passages,  and  in  the 
Lives  that  he  wrote  during  his  last  decade,  his  language  becomes 
purer  still,  it  is  English  of  no  period  ;  and  his  mere  manner, 
though  still  quite  perceptible,  is  more  subdued  and  temperate. 
His  literary  models  have  been  much  debated.  The  riveted 
antitheses  of  Johnson,  the  pendulous  clauses  of  Gibbon,  count 
for  a  little  ;  the  aggressive  pointed  speech  of  Jeffrey  counts 
for  more.  I  cannot  see,  as  some  have  done,  any  trace  of  the 
study  of  Hazlitt.  Sydney  Smith  may  have  given  Macaulay 
some  lessons  in  epigram.  But  it  is  easier  to  see  his  general 
lineage  than  his  particular  creditors.  Behind  him  is  the  long, 
twofold,  eighteenth-century  tradition  of  plain  diction  and 
fighting  rhetoric.  '  In  his  hands  the  thing  became,'  not  a 
trumpet,  but  sometimes  a  machine-gun,  sometimes  heavier 
ordnance.  Yet  such  figures  must  always  do  injustice  to  his 
real  power  and  compass.  Macaulay,  once  more,  stands  as  a 
writer  ;  he  will  always  be  there  ;  he  will  not  go  down  until 
Gibbon  and  Swift  go  down  ;  and  although  he  may  not  be  their 
equal,  he  is  only  less  than  their  equal. 


Macaulay  relates  that  Leigh  Hunt,  in  the  course  of  a  begging 
letter,  wrote  to  him  lamenting  '  that  my  verses  want  the  true 
poetical  aroma  that  breathes  from  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  ' ;  and 
other  critics  have  made  it  a  test  of  discernment  to  see  no 
poetry  in  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.  It  is,  indeed,  almost 
impossible  to  miss  seeing  to  what  order  of  poetry  the  Lays 
do  not  belong.  But  let  them  be  judged  in  their  own  kind  : 
there  is  nothing  at  all  in  them  like 

Field  of  death,  where'er  thou  be, 
Groan  thou  with  our  victory  !  .  .  . 

and  there  is  nothing  quite  like 

That  yellow  lustre  glimmer'd  pale 
On  broken  plate  and  bloodied  mail, 
Rent  crest  and  shatter'd  coronet. 
Of  Baron,  Earl,  and  Banneret  .  .  . 


132  MACAULAY 

Beside  the  rarer  and  more  piercing  note  of  Wordsworth  or  of 
Scott,  Macaulay's  bugle  has  the  ring  not  so  much  of  baser  as 
of  less  tempered  metal,  just  as  the  rhetoric  of  his  prose  is  dulled 
by  the  side  of  Demosthenes.  But  his  verse,  like  his  prose,  is 
genuine  for  all  that.  Compare  it,  again,  in  its  own  kind,  with 
that  of  his  successors  Aytoun  or  Sir  Francis  Doyle,  both  of 
them  spirited,  impetuous  makers  of  martial  lays,  and  its 
excellence  is  conspicuous.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  he  prints 
himself  on  the  memory  ;  that  is  one  quality,  at  any  rate, 
indispensabls  in  popular  writing.  And  popularity,  the  virtue 
that  John  Leycester  Adolphus  so  well  defined  in  his  praise  of 
Scott ,  is  not  to  be  had  for  the  asking,  Horatius  throughout,  and 
the  first  appearance  of  the  '  princely  pair  '  in  the  Battle  of  Lake 
Regillus,  and  most  of  the  Prophecy  of  Capys,  are  popular  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word.  And  they  are  more  than  that. 
They  are  noble  ;  not  so  much  by  virtue  of  any  rare  magic,  or 
of  the  highest  felicity  of  style,  but  for  their  manly  ardour  and 
their  Roman  strength  of  onset,  which  are  felt  in  the  opening 
of  Horatius — indeed  in  all  Horatius — and  in  the  close  of  Lake 
Regillus.  Nor  do  they  lack  more  delicate  touches,  as  in  the 
line  about  '  April's  ivory  moonlight  '  and  in  the  last  three 
stanzas  of  Horatius.  Macaulay's  massiveness  and  distinctness, 
his  avoidance  of  surplusage,  give  to  the  Lays  a  real  unity  of 
effect  ;  and  his  scenes  in  verse  often  leave  a  sharper  image  than 
his  scenes  in  prose,  where  he  is  capable  of  swamping  the  effect 
in  excessive  detail  and  in  figures  of  oratory. 

The  Lays  are  really  lays,  -not  ballads,  and  the  occasional 
ballad-tags  ('to  witness  if  I  lie,'  'Never,  I  ween,'  'Then  out 
spake  ')  do  no  particular  good.  Macaulay  cannot  completely 
sink  himself  in  his  imaginary  minstrel.  The  value  of  the  Lays 
does  not  depend  on  the  truth  of  the  theory  or  conjecture  which 
happily  prompted  them,  and  which  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis, 
as  we  have  seen,  could  only  value  for  that  reason.  The  lost 
poems  that  might  have  lain  behind  the  legends  of  the  Latin 
historians  remain  in  nubibus  ;  it  is  only  certain  that  they  would 
not  have  been  Maeaulayesque .  For  the  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome — 
and  it  is  one  of  their  virtues — are  a  new  species,  and  not  a 
revival  or  adaptation  of  an  old  species.  They  come  in  the 
lineage,  no  doubt,  of  Scott  ;  but  their  fashion  of  narrative,  and 
their  characteristic  rhythm — which  is  not  without  lapses  or 
snags,  but  is  quite  individual — are  only  found  in  Macaulay's 
own  imitators. 

His  other  verse,  though  not  voluminous,  is  not  to  be  neglected. 
The  Armada  and  Ivry  well  anticipate  the  Lays.     The  early 


FROUDE  133 

pieces,  written  in  the  manner  of  his  fellow-collegian  Praed,  are 
not  very  neat-handed,  and  the  long  Byronic  Marriage  of 
Tirzah  and  Ahirad  (1827)  is  only  curious  as  coming  from  the 
future  critic  of  Byron  (1830).  But  the  Battle  of  Naseby,  com- 
posed at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  is  as  good  as  the  Cameronian 
diatribes  in  Old  Mortality,  and  is,  like  them,  written  from  the 
outside,  as  a  tour  deforce.  The  pretty  song  '  0  stay,  Madonna, 
stay,'  is  noticeable  as  Macaulay's  only  love-poem.  The 
Epitaph  on  a  Jacobite  has  been  named  already  ;  it  shows,  among 
other  things,  that  the  couplet  of  Pope  will  always  have  worthy 
work  to  do  and  is  not  an  outworn  mode.  Macaulay's  most 
serious  and  mature,  though  by  no  means  his  best,  piece  of 
verse,  the  Lines  Written  in  August  184-7,  is  imitative  in  form 
and  follows  Gray's  Elegy,  but  is  a  true  record  of  the  writer's 
own  ideals,  and  of  his  unexpected  streak  of  pensiveness. 

XI 

The  ever-questionable  Fronde  has  not  worn  so  well  as 
Macaulay  ;  and  he  is  far  oftener  open  to  the  reproach  that  his 
tale  asks  in  vain  for  confirmation  and  that  he  is  honestly 
incapable  of  dealing  justice.  He  is  often  correct,  he  is  often 
fair  ;  but  we  are  never  sure  ;  and  the  more  eloquent  he  is, 
the  more  we  are  haunted  by  the  doubt.  He  has  a  rarer  mind 
than  Macaulay,  and  a  more  enigmatical  one  ;  he  cares  for 
religion  and  speculation  ;  and  he  is  a  more  delicate,  though 
not  a  more  potent,  artist.  He  too  has  the  popular  quality,  and 
commands  a  rhetoric,  purer  and  more  chastened  than 
Macaulay's,  of  his  own  ;  but  he  has  not,  in  handling  political 
history,  anything  like  so  massive  a  store  of  knowledge  or  so 
strong  a  head.  The  two  are  grouped  together  here  because, 
Carry le  apart,  they  are  the  greatest  men  of  letters  amongst  the 
historian^  of  their  time. 

James  Anthony  Froude  l  (1818-94)  came  out  of  a  Devon- 
shire parsonage  of  the  old,  high  and  dry,  unperplexed,  pre- 
Tractarian  type.  His  early  experience  was  harsh  ;  he  was 
unrecognised  and  poorly  treated  both  at  home  and  at  school ; 
and, though  he  bore  no  malice,  he  broke  away.  So,  before  him, 
did  his  elder  brother,  Richard  Hurrell,  the  storm-bird  of  the 
Oxford  movement,  who  died  before  learning  to  fly  steadily, 
or  to  see  the  true  direction  of  the  ecclesiastical  wind.  James 
Anthony  went  up  to  Oriel  in  1835.  He  read  the  classics,  not  as 
a  strict  scholar,  but  in  his  passionate  appreciative  way,  as  his 
papers  written  long  afterwards  on  Lucian  and  Euripides  attest. 


134  FROUDE 

And  he  was  under  the  same  roof  as  Newman  ;  he  began  to 
think,  and  to  be  troubled  by  the  religious  ferment  of  the  place 
and  hour.  Froude 's  very  singular  mental  journey,  in  its  first 
phase,  lasted  till  about  1849  ;  by  that  date  his  convictions 
were  clear  and  his  task  was  chosen.  He  has  told  much  of  his 
story  in  the  essay  called  The  Oxford  Counter -Reformation, 
which  is  to  be  found  in  the  fourth  volume  (1883)  of  Short 
Studies  on  Great  Subjects.  There  he  portrays  Keble,  Isaac 
Williams,  Hurrell,  and  above  all  Newman,  whom  he  honoured 
to  the  last.  He  tells  how  he  revolted  from  his  youthful  sub- 
servience to  Hurrell  and  to  the  new  intolerant  doctrine  ;  how 
a  visit  to  some  devout  but  not  fanatical  Irish  Evangelicals 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  other  side  ;  how  he  helped  Newman 
in  one  of  the  Lives  of  the  Saints,  and  how  his  mental  gorge 
rose  up  against  their  absurdities  ;  how  Newman  startled  him 
by  saying  that  Hume's  argument  against  miracles  was  un- 
assailable by  the  natural  reason  ;  and  how  he,  Froude,  though 
he  had  already  begun  to  read  Carlyle,  was  in  the  end  left  without 
doctrinal  or  other  moorings  ;  all  the  more  painfully,  because 
he  had  taken  deacon's  orders  in  the  year  of  fate  1845,  when 
Newman  seceded  to  the  old  faith  ;  and  a  nominal  parson,  or 
half-parson,  Froude  was  to  remain  until  1872,  when  the  Relief 
Act  was  passed. 

By  now  he  was  a  Fellow  of  Exeter,  but  Oxford  was  not  to 
hold  him.  His  early  troubles  and  his  inner  conflicts  are  repre- 
sented, under  artless  disguise,  in  two  stories,  or  sketches,  the  one 
called  Shadows  of  the  Clouds,  the  other  The  Nemesis  of  Faith 
(1849).  The  latter  work  was  pounced  upon  and  hunted  down, 
and  a  copy  was  melodramatically  burned  in  Exeter  College 
Hall.  If  worthless  as  a  story,  it  is  curious  as  a  document. 
One  Sutherland  Markham,  who  is  more  or  less  the  author, 
works  his  way  out  of  the  narrow  beliefs  of  his  childhood,  and 
tries  to  live  by  reason.  He  fails  ;  he  becomes  enamoured  of  a 
married  lady.  '  They  did  not  fall  as  vulgar  minds  count 
falling  '  ;  but  still  Markham  has  '  reasoned  himself  out  of  the 
idea  of  sin.'  In  this  condition  he  is  captured  by  a  priest,  and 
becomes  a  Roman  Catholic,  but  only  for  a  time  ;  his  end  is 
left  uncertain,  but  is  anyhow  a  luckless  one.  He  remains 
bewildered  between  Newman  and  Carlyle. 

Froude  himself  ceased  to  be  thus  bewildered.  He  was 
frowned  on  by  orthodox  and  heretics  alike,  and  withdrew  from 
Oxford  ;  in  fact  was  virtually  turned  out.  He  married,  went 
into  the  country,  and  threw  himself  on  literature.  He  began, 
in  the   Westminster  and  elsewhere,  to  print  the  essays  after- 


MORAL  SPECULATIONS  135 

wards  to  be  gathered  up  in  his  four  volumes  of  Short  Studies  on 
Great  Subjects,  which  are  the  fruit  of  the  leisure  that  he  secured 
from  time  to  time  from  the  work  of  the  History.  One  of  the 
earliest  and  happiest  of  these  '  studies  '  is  not  a  study  at  all,  but 
a  fable,  a  form  in  which  Froude  excelled  ;  it  is  called  The 
Cat's  Pilgrimage,  and  represents  a  mood  which  perhaps  lies 
deeper  than  all  his  theories  ;  it  is  the  mood  of  irony,  the 
haunting  sense  of  vanity.  The  cat  goes  forth  among  the  beasts 
to  learn  the  meaning  of  life,  and  they  all  tell  her  to  do  her 
duty  ;  but  interpret  that  mandate  in  sundry  owlish,  or  doggish, 
or  foxy  senses,  so  that  no  satisfaction  is  given  to  the  cat. 
Froude's  paper  on  the  poem  of  Reynard  the  Fox  also  shows,  in 
graver  form,  his  queer  strain  of  moral  questioning.  What  has 
Mr.  Carlyle,  with  his  doctrine  that  right  prevails  in  the  end,  to 
say  to  the  Hero  as  Reynard  ?  Reynard,  on  the  whole,  succeeds  ; 
and  the  rascal  is  happy.  How  are  we  to  get  at  him  ?  Why  do 
we,  rather  sneakingly,  admire  him  ?  How  about  the  moral 
government  of  this  world,  in  the  light  of  Reynard  ?  Froude 
enjoys  performing  his  egg-dance  among  these  uncomfortable 
questions,  and  also  enjoys  not  answering  them  ;  he  never 
breaks  the  eggs.  All  the  while,  he  believes,  as  firmly  as  his 
master,  in  the  tenet  that  right  does  ultimately  prevail,  and  that 
in  history  we  must  judge  by  the  event  and  the  achievement, 
and  take  liberal  views  in  appraising  the  means  that  are  em- 
ployed by  the  imperfect  tools  of  Providence. 


XII 

Some  of  the  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects,  issued  in  four 
series  (1867-83),  are  reprints  of  essays  published  before  the 
History  appeared  ;  some  are  of  much  later  date  ;  and  the 
whole  collection  falls  into  three  or  four  groups  : 

1.  There  are  many  papers  on  religion  and  theology.  The 
account  of  the  Oxford  Movement  has  been  mentioned.  One  of 
the  most  eloquent,  The  Philosophy  of  Catholicism,  is  an  effort  to 
put  in  plain  language  the  appeal  of  the  old  faith  to  the  heart 
and  soul  of  mankind  ;  to  enforce  its  historic  service,  and 
vindicate  its  relative  truth.  A  strange  task  for  the  admirer 
of  Calvin  and  the  assailant  of  Popery  ;  but  it  does  him  honour, 
and  he  might  well  have  remembered  the  spirit  of  this  paper  in 
some  of  his  later  diatribes.  Not  that  it  would  be  welcome  to 
Roman  readers,  for  Froude's  point  of  view  is  that  he  is  doing 
intelligent  justice  to  an  obsolete  phase  of  the  human  spirit. 
More  characteristic  is   Calvinism,  the   address  given  to   the 


136  FROUDE 

students  of  St.  Andrews,  where  Froude  vindicates  the  greatness 
of  Knox,  the  tonic  power  of  the  Scottish  creed  in  bracing  a 
nation  of  freemen,  and  the  eternal  truth  implicit  in  the  pre- 
destinarian  dogma.  Of  the  fabric  of  Calvinistic  theory  he 
himself  retains  but  one  stone,  which  he  thinks  the  cornerstone  : 
a  belief,  namely,  that  there  is  a  justice  at  the  heart  of  things, 
which  declares  itself  through  the  moral  law.  He  really  has 
no  other  doctrine  ;  and  he  once  observes  that  '  God  gave  the 
Gospel  ;  the  father  of  lies  invented  theology.'  To  cherish 
this  ethical  residuum  of  faith  Froude  was  led,  no  doubt,  by 
Carlyle  ;  but  he  was  better  informed  on  the  speculative  side 
than  Carlyle,  and  much  more  capable  of  consecutive  statement. 
Still  his  looseness  of  assertion  is  seen  everywhere.  On  one  page 
he  calls  Milton  a  Calvinist  ;  on  another,  he  says  that  '  only  a 
fourth  of  mankind  are  born  Christians  ;  the  remainder  never 
hear  the  name  of  Christ  except  as  a  reproach.'  Froude  forgets 
the  honours  paid  by  the  creed  of  Islam  to  the  prophet  Jesus  ; 
though  he  presently  eulogises  that  creed  for  its  likeness  to 
Calvinism.  His  most  striking  theological  paper  is  that  upon 
the  Book  of  Job  ;  here  can  be  studied  Froude's  peculiar  cast 
of  scepticism,  and  also  the  limitations  which  he  sets  to  it.  The 
review  of  Newman's  Grammar  of  Asse7it  is  of  interest  from  the 
same  point  of  view  ;  and,  in  his  handling  of  abstract  ideas, 
Froude  often  reminds  us  of  Newman  ;  the  simple,  apparently 
lucid  style  hides  the  incoherence  of  the  argument.  In  all  this 
kind  of  work,  Froude's  skill  in  popularising  '  great  subjects  ' 
is  apparent  ;  it  amounts  to  a  fine  art  ;  it  is  impossible  not  to 
read  him  ;  he  is  as  transparent  as  Mill,  and  much  more  elegant, 
though  his  transparency  is  often  delusive  and  his  transitions  are 
lax.  He  is  the  ideal  author  for  those  who  wish  simply  to  be 
borne  along,  and  to  look  into  nothing.  His  craft  in  exposition  is 
more  favourably  seen  in  his  book,  written  late  in  life  (1880),  on 
Bunyan,  where  he  expounds  with  sympathetic  insight  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  unlettered  Protestant,  and  once  more  proclaims 
the  forgotten  verities  of  Calvinism. 

2.  The  Reynard  paper  has  been  named  already,  and  also 
The  Cat's  Pilgrimage.  It  is  a  pity  Froude  did  not  make  more 
fables  and  apologues.  The  Lion  and  the  Oxen,  The  Farmer  and 
the  Fox,  The  Bread-Fruit  Tree,  though  written  in  prose,  are 
worthy  of  La  Fontaine  or  Krylov.  The  bread-fruit  tree  is  the 
old  faith  ;  an  amazing,  fertile  growth,  which  nourished  men 
for  many  ages,  and  of  which  no  one  believed  that  it  could  ever 
decay,  but  decay  it  did.  A  Siding  at  a  Railway  Station  is  still 
better  known.     A  train  full  of  all  ranks  and  classes  is  suddenly 


CONCEPTION  OF  A  HISTORY  137 

stopped  ;  their  baggage  is  overhauled,  with  results  discon- 
certing to  the  rich  and  notable,  but  better  for  the  third-class 
passenger,  Piers  the  Ploughman.  The  Last  Judgement  is  here 
signified  ;  the  karma,  the  net  result  of  each  man's  action,  is 
appraised  once  and  for  all.  Such  is  Froude's  gospel,  and 
Carlyle's  ;  but  their  doomsday  is  purely  an  ideal  one,  and  is 
postponed  sine  die. 

3.  Among  the  pleasantest  of  Froude's  writings  are  his  notes 
and  diaries  of  travel,  with  their  sketches  of  scenery  and  manners . 
Here  he  compares  well  with  Thackeray  ;  there  is  the  same  ease 
and  frankness,  and  the  same  melodious  rendering  of  immediate 
impressions.  A  Fortnight  in  Kerry  also  displays  a  good 
temper,  which  is  remarkable  in  the  author  of  The  English  in 
Ireland.  The  Leaves  from  a  South  African  Journal  record  a 
visit  paid  to  the  Cape  in  1S74,  and  belongs  to  Froude's  later 
books  of  travel.  Sea  Studies  turns  out  to  be  a  sympathetic 
criticism  of  Euripides,1  in  a  happy  setting.  Froude  was  an 
open-air  man,  a  sportsman,  a  yachtsman,  devoted  to  the  sea. 
The  unquiet  spark  in  his  composition  disappears  when  he  is 
alone  with  nature  ;  his  scepticism  takes  a  serener  cast  ;  and 
in  the  region  where  he  then  moves  there  is  nothing  to  call  forth 
his  intellectual  faults. 

4.  He  is  for  ever  telling  us  unmistakeably  how,  and  how 
alone,  history  should  be  written.  It  is  not  a  science.  He 
reviews  Buckle  with  admiring  disbelief.  The  phenomena  of 
history,  he  urges,  never  repeat  themselves  ;  the  event  can 
never  be  foretold,  however  well  the  causes  may  be  known  ; 
for  who,  however  well  informed,  could  ever  have  foretold  the 
growth  of  Islam  or  of  Christianity  ?  Yet  no  study  which 
cannot  foretell  things  is  a  science.  Here  Froude  speaks  in 
the  spirit  of  Carlyle.  Yet  we  feel  that,  since  science  is  only 
truth  accurately  observed  and  methodised,  and  politics  are 
only  present  history,  and  all  reforms  presuppose  a  constancy  of 
operation  in  human  motive,  Froude's  scepticism  goes  beyond 
reason.  It  is,  in  fact,  of  no  philosophical  interest  ;  but  it 
suggests  to  him  the  mode  of  composition  which  suits  his  own 
genius.  This  also  he  plainly  defines.  A  history  must  be  a 
drama,  in  which  '  the  actors  shall  reveal  themselves  and  their 
characters  in  their  own  words  '  ;  'let  us  hear  the  man  himself  '  ; 
the  historian  need  not  impose  his  own  colouring  or  opinions,  as 
even  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  do  ;  the  true  model  is  rather 
Shakespeare,  in  his  history  plays  ;  or  Homer,  since  a  history 
is  more  of  an  epic  than  a  drama.  It  is  obvious  to  retort  that 
were  this  the  only  way.  a  work  like  Gardiner's  would  be  futile  ; 


138  FROUDE 

and  also  that  Froude  not  only  composed  but  perverted  his  own 
History  under  the  sway  of  one  or  two  dominant  ideas,  and  that 
he  by  no  means  lets  its  tale  tell  itself.  But  the  passage  shows 
that  he  came  to  his  task  with  the  intentions  of  the  artist  rather 
than  of  the  theorist  or  of  the  mere  chronicler.  The  same  point 
of  view  is  seen  in  the  paper  entitled  The  Scientific  Method 
Applied  to  History.  And  one  of  the  Short  Studies,  first  printed 
in  1852,  gives  an  earnest  of  Froude's  method  and  spirit.  This 
is  England's  Forgotten  Worthies,  which  furnished  Tennyson 
with  the  story  of  The  Revenge,  and  which  introduces  Hawkins 
and  Drake,  the  heroes  of  Froude's  own  county  of  Devon.  He 
was  again  to  celebrate  them,  long  afterwards,  in  his  Oxford 
lectures  in  1893  on  the  English  Seamen  in  the  Sixteenth  Century. 
These  noble  buccaneers  he  styles,  in  his  early  article,  'the  same 
indomitable  god-fearing  men  whose  life  was  one  great  liturgy.' 
The  phrase  gives  a  clue  to  Froude's  whole-hearted  partisanship, 
and  to  the  paradoxical  relish  with  which  this  sworn  believer  in 
justice  and  righteousness  strove  to  make  the  best  of  his  robust 
heroes.  Indeed,  the  '  hero  as  mariner  '  is  added  to  the  gallery 
of  Carlyle.  Hawkins  and  Drake  took  the  blame  and  the  praise, 
took  all  the  risk  and  a  share  of  the  loot.  They  did  not  mind 
being  disowned  by  their  mistress  if  they  failed,  or  if  they 
succeeded  too  well.  They  were  the  unauthorised  founders  of 
the  navy  which  was  to  save  Protestant  England  and  spiritual 
freedom.  In  these  narratives,  early  and  late,  the  style  excels 
itself  in  skill  and  clearness,  and  irony  and  finish.  The  irony 
is  at  the  expense  of  the  modern  liberal  who  throws  up  his 
hands  against  piracy  ;  and  Froude  evidently  sighs  that  those 
good  days  should  have  gone  for  ever. 


XIII 

The  scope  and  object  of  the  History  of  England  now  come  in 
sight.  The  first  two  of  the  twelve  volumes  appeared  in  1856, 
and  the  last  instalment  in  1870.  The  preface  which  finally 
preceded  the  whole  work  is  dated  in  the  latter  year,  and  clearly 
explains  the  author's  intention.  He  had  meant  at  first  to 
narrate  the  whole  reign  of  Elizabeth  ;  but  was  led,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  go  back  to  that  of  Henry  vin.  ;  and,  on  the  other,  to 
bring  his  tale  to  a  natural  and  dramatic  ending  with  the 
Armada,  with  a  consequent  alteration  of  the  original  title. 
These  changes  of  plan  he  justifies  by  his  ruling  purpose,  which 
was  to  vindicate  the  English  Reformation,  both  politically  and 


ATTACKS  ON  THE  HISTORY  139 

spiritually,  to  the  discomfiture  alike  of  the  High  Churchman 
and  of  the  secular  Liberal.  For  the  Reformation  meant,  in  the 
sphere  of  affairs,  the  establishment  of  the  royal  instead  of  the 
papal  authority  over  the  whole  realm,  including  the  Church  ; 
while  in  the  sphere  of  religion  it  meant  the  removal  of  all 
human  intermediaries  between  man's  soul  and  God's  word. 
The  first  four  volumes  are  chiefly  devoted  to  the  vindication 
of  Henry  from  this  point  of  view.  The  other  eight,  covering 
thirty  years  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  continue  the  story, 
with  the  difference  that  the  queen,  instead  of  being  '  white- 
washed '  or  too  much  glorified,  is  portrayed  with  all  the  shadows, 
and  with  the  further  difference  that  Froude  now  relies  more 
on  the  mass  of  manuscript  authorities,  hitherto  unexplored,  on 
which  he  spent  immense  though  by  no  means  sufficiently  skilled 
labour.  Throughout  he  held  to  his  epical  or  dramatic  con- 
ception of  a  history,  and  to  his  master-theory, that  Protestantism 
saved  England  and  freedom  of  thought,  and  that  the  two 
Tudor  monarchs  saved  Protestantism  ;  and  that  this  they  did 
by  the  aid,  above  all,  of  the  navy,  which  had  been  made  possible 
only  by  the  seamen -ad  venturers. 

Four-fifths  of  Macaulay's  History  had  appeared  by  1856;  and 
Froude's  early  volumes  were  also  very  popular ;  in  spite  of  coming 
in  the  wake  of  so  powerful  a  craft,  their  course  was  hardly  dis- 
turbed by  its  wash.  Froude  sailed,  for  that  matter,  with  more 
ease  and  lightness  than  Macaulay  ;  in  another  way,  he  was 
even  smoother  reading  ;  he  was  the  master  of  a  style  commoner 
amongst  essayists  or  novelists,  than  historians,  and  it  spoke 
to  all.  The  scholars,  reviewers,  and  High  Church  divines,  how- 
ever, were  soon  up  in  arms  ;  and  the  teapot  storm  which  had 
greeted  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  swelled  into  a  gale  (to  continue 
the  figure).  It  blew  in  Froude's  teeth,  though  without  appre- 
ciably altering  his  course  or  arresting  his  speed,  for  the  rest  of 
his  days.  The  criticisms  upon  his  errors  of  fact,  transcription, 
and  inference  blew  hardest  at  a  somewhat  later  date.  At  first 
he  was  chiefly  attacked  for  his  He nry- worship,  for  his  general 
partisanship,  for  his  condonation  of  atrocities  when  they  hap- 
pened to  be  committed  by  his  own  side,  and  for  misreading 
the  character,  so  imperfectly  representative,  of  Henry's  parlia- 
ments. Some  of  these  charges  are  pressed  hard,  from  the  Whig 
standpoint,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  July  1858.  Many  of 
them  have  been  generally  accepted  by  later  historians  ;  and  it 
is  equally  clear  that,  as  one  of  them  has  said,  Froude's  '  work 
will  have  to  be  done  again,'  and  that  no  one  has  done  it,  as 
a  whole,  since  his  time,  even  as  no  one  had  done  it  before.     It 


140  FROUDE 

is  agreed  that  though  history  is  an  interpretative  art  as  well  as 
a  scientific  record,  still  founded  in  science  it  must  be  ;  and  that 
Froude,  despite  his  immense  labour  in  researching  and  transcrib- 
ing, did  this  work  in  an  untrained  and  careless  way,  which 
falsified  his  record  at  many  points,  and  shakes  our  confidence 
generally.  It  is  also  clear  that  though  he  freely  admits  that 
there  were  bad  men  on  the  side  he  favours,  and  good  ones  on 
the  other  side,  still  his  whole  temper  is  unjudicial  ;  and, 
further,  that  he  deals  intolerably  and  also  needlessly  in  moral 
paradox.  His  larger  thesis  did  not  require  all  that  whitewash- 
ing and  special  pleading.  By  his  own  favoured  theory,  heaven 
uses  extraordinary  instruments,  who  serve  its  ends  unawares 
and  from  doubtful  motives.  Why,  then,  strive  to  make  them 
out  cleaner  than  they  were  ?  Certain  Catholics  were  detri- 
mental to  the  state,  and  had  to  be  made  harmless  :  but  why 
seem  to  extenuate  the  practice  of  killing  them  ?  Froude 's 
lectures  on  the  seamen  are  full  of  reasonings  of  this  kind  : 
when  he  comes  to  some  piece  of  sharp  practice  or  cruelty,  he 
cries,  'Let  us  have  done  with  cant,'  and  urges  either  that  the 
enemy  was  just  as  bad,  or  that  the  offenders  were  fighting 
in  a  great  cause  ;  it  was  life  or  death  for  the  country,  and 
we  must  not  scrutinise  too  closely.  The  effect  would  be 
better  if  he  did  not  show  a  kind  of  glee  in  these  apologies  ; 
and  moreover,  he  provokes  a  feeling  of  revulsion  against  his 
heroes,  which  no  plain  recital  of  their  doings  would  have 
produced. 

We  must,  then,  read  the  History  with  a  constantly  suspended 
judgement,  as  to  its  reading  of  character  and  policy.  As  to 
errors  of  detail,  Fronde's  name  has  not  suffered  so  greatly  as 
his  principal  assailant,  Freeman,1  desired.  Freeman,  in  his 
long  series  of  Saturday  Review  articles,  is  pronounced  to  have 
much  exaggerated  his  case,  and  to  have  been  sometimes  wrong 
himself.  It  is  unluckily,  however,  no  plea  in  the  courts  of  truth 
that  Froude  made  his  mistakes  like  a  gentleman,  while  his 
adversary  brawled.  Froude 's  honesty  and  industry  are  not 
now  disputed  ;  he  was  the  first  to  dig,  at  Simancas  and  else- 
where, at  all  deeply  into  the  original  documents.  But  his  in- 
accuracy and  fallibility  in  doing  so  are  admitted.  He  pursues 
Mary  Stuart  unrelentingly  ;  and  one  who  had  really  investi- 
gated the  story,  Andrew  Lang,  observes  : 

He  is  quite  untrustworthy  ;  he  has  taken  fragments  from  three 
letters  of  three  different  dates,  and  printed  them,  with  marks  of 
quotation,  as  if  they  occurred  in  a  single  letter.  He  accuses 
Mary  Stuart  of  a  certain  action,  on  the  authority  of  an  English 


THE  HISTORY:    EPISODES  141 

ambassador,  and  when  we  read  his  letter  we  find  him  saying 
that  rumour  charges  Mary  with  the  fact,  but  that  he  does  not 
believe  it. 

I  remember  long  ago  hearing  one  eminent  student  of  '  psychi- 
cal research  '  say  about  another  :  '  He  thinks  he  is  making  a 
scientific  transition,  when  he  is  only  making  a  literary  transi- 
tion.' This  seerns  to  apply  well  to  Froude.  It  wras  by  a  sound 
instinct  that  he  scouted  '  science  '  ;  it  did  not  suit  him.  He  is 
a  patriot,  a  Protestant,  a  force-wrorshipper,  a  tale-teller,  a 
portrait-painter,  an  artist.     And  what  sort  of  an  artist  ? 

XIV 

His  epical  choice  of  theme  was  a  just  and  a  distinct  one. 
'  The  English  Reformation  I  sing,  and  the  temporal  defeat  of 
the  Catholic  supremacy.'  He  stopped  at  the  right  point  for 
his  purpose  in  the  year  1588.  The  laying-out  of  his  story  is 
less  excellent.  With  all  its  clearness  of  style,  it  becomes 
swamped  in  detail,  especially  in  the  later  volumes,  which  are 
the  fullest  of  extracts  from  the  documents.  The  chapters  on 
economic  and  social  life  are  not  well  fused  with  the  rest.  And 
Froude's  two  or  three  ruling  ideas,  being  inadequate  to  the 
complexity  of  the  phenomena,  fail  to  ensure  the  due  impression 
of  unity  in  the  wrhole.  He  is  undoubtedly  best  in  episode,  and 
in  those  episodes  which  suit  his  pictorial  gift.  Here,  indeed, 
he  is  hard  to  match.  The  murders  of  Rizzio,  of  Darnley,  and 
of  Murray,  and  the  last  scene  at  Fotheringay,  are  told  in  a  way 
worthy  of  a  great  novelist.  They  leave  a  sharper  impression, 
be  they  accurate  or  not,  than  the  poetic  treatment  of  Swin- 
burne. Froude  also  loves  pageants  like  the  coronation  of 
Anne  Boleyn  or  the  reception  of  Philip  by  Mary ;  and  herein 
is  himself  a  true  Elizabethan.  He  revels  in  the  martyrdoms  of 
Hooper  and  Latimer  ;  he  makes  a  perfect  short  story  out 
of  the  Nun  of  Kent  ;  and  he  rises  to  his  highest  in  describing 
the  last  hours  of  his  hero,  Henry.  The  rhetoric  is  restrained  ; 
the  colouring,  though  never  faint,  is  clear  and  pure  ;  the  English 
is  limpid  and  right,  and  is  never  made  turbid  by  the  manifest 
passion  of  the  writer. 

But  the  History  also  lives,  as  a  piece  of  literature,  by  its  more 
abstract  passages  of  argument  and  reflection.  Froude  is  sparing 
of  formal  and  balanced  periods  ;  his  sentences  are  cast  less  in 
Gibbon's  mould  than  in  Hume's.  But  he  rises  without  strain 
from  the  plainer  march  of  the  narrative  into  a  more  musical 
and  elaborate  cadence,  when  he  comes  to  his  patriotic  out- 


142  FROUDE 

bursts,  or  to  his  celebrated  praise  of  the  English  liturgy,  or  to 
discuss  the  ethics  of  persecution.  Here  again  the  form  is 
excellent,  but  these  passages,  like  his  descriptive  ones,  gain  by 
extraction.  He  has  a  habit  of  leaving  them  in  the  air,  and 
of  promising  something  important  which  never  comes.  The 
anthologies  quote  the  page  in  his  opening  chapter  beginning, 
'  For,  indeed,  a  change  was  coming  upon  the  world,'  and  its 
peculiar  music  is  hardly  to  be  paralleled  outside  of  Newman. 
But  he  never  says  clearly  what  the  change  was  ;  unless,  indeed, 
as  a  similar  passage  (ch.  xlvii.),  and  an  equally  disappointing 
one,  may  indicate,  it  is  the  change  produced  in  the  general 
mind  by  the  Copernican  astronomy.  Fronde's  chapters  often 
begin  with  this  kind  of  overture,  and  drop  suddenly,  without 
due  transition,  to  the  day's  work.  At  other  times  there  is  a. 
real  connexion,  and  an  impressive  one.  One  short  passage 
may  be  quoted  as  characteristic  alike  in  spirit,  diction,  and 
rhythm  ;  it  shows  Froude,  as  a  writer,  at  his  best  : 

Suddenly, j|  and  from  a  quarter [ least j expected, ||  a  little  cloud| 
rose 'over  the  halcyon  j  prospects  |  of  the  queen  |  of  Scots,  (|  wrapped) 
the  heavens  |  in  blackness,  ||  and  burst  [over  her  head  |  in  a  tornado. 
On  the  political  stage  Mary  Stuart  was  but  a  great  actress  ;  the 
'  woman  '  had  a  drama  of  her  own  going  on  behind  the  scenes  ; 
the  theatre  caught  fire  ;  the  mock  heroics  of  the  Catholic  crusade 
burnt  into  ashes  ;||and  a  tremendous  I  domestic  |  tragedy  |  was  re- 
vealed J  before  the  astonished |  eyes  |  of  Europe  |. 

.  Whatever  the  faults  of  the  History,  Froude's  English  in 
Ireland  (1872-4)  is  an  altogether  less  worthy  production,  and 
its  chief  merit  is  to  have  provoked  Lecky  to  supply  the  cor- 
rective in  his  classical  volumes. 

The  right  of  a  people  to  self-government  consists  and  can  consist 
in  nothing  but  their  power  to  defend  themselves.  No  other  defini- 
tion is  possible  (i.  3).  .  .  .  The  right  to  resist  depends  on  the  power 
of  resistance  (i.  5).  .  .  .  The  worst  means  of  governing  the  Irish 
is  to  give  them  their  own  way.  In  concession  they  only  see  fear, 
and  those  that  fear  them  they  hate  and  despise.  Coercion  succeeds 
better  :  they  respect  a  master  hand,  though  it  be  a  hard  and  cruel 
one.  But  let  authority  be  just  as  well  as  strong,  give  the  Irishman 
a  just  master,  and  he  will  follow  him  to  the  world's  end.  Cromwell 
alone.  .  .  .  (ii.  138). 

In  such  a  temper,  with  conclusions  fixed  in  advance,  and  simply 
making  out  a  case,  Froude  reviews  three  centuries  of  our 
history — its  thorniest  chapter.  Such  a  method  any  man  can 
judge  without  regard  to  his  own  political  sympathies  ;    the 


LATER  WRITINGS— STYLE  143 

book  that  superseded  Froude's  was  written  by  a  convinced 
Unionist.  It  is,  however,  strange  he  did  not  see  that  the 
argument  resting  solely  on  force  and  the  event  is  double-edged, 
and  that  any  successful  rebellion,  on  his  own  showing,  would 
justify  itself  as  the  will  of  providence.  His  book  suffers 
throughout  in  tone  and  style  from  its  fundamental  prejudice. 

Oceana,  or  England  and  her  Colonies  (1886),  partly  a  political 
pamphlet  and  partly  a  diary  of  Froude's  trip  to  the  Cape  and 
Australasia,  is  one  of  his  most  agreeable  books.  The  chapters 
on  South  Africa,  which  got  him  into  warm  water  as  usual,  have 
their  interest  for  historians.  The  meditations,  which  are 
sceptical  and  pessimistic  but  serene  in  tone,  drift  with  the 
motion  of  the  ship.  The  descriptions  of  men,  manners,  and 
places  have  the  old  lightness  and  ease.  The  book  is  held 
together  by  the  spirit  of  imperial  patriotism,  which  glows  and 
expands  more  than  ever  under  the  Southern  Cross.  Froude 
was  all  for  a  closer  bond — a  bond  not  of  forms  but  of  reciprocal 
sympathy — between  the  mother  and  daughter  countries  ;  his 
moral  here  is  a  true  and  sound  one,  and  the  contribution  of  the 
colonies  and  dependencies  during  the  world -strife  of  yesterday 
has  more  than  borne  out  his  hopes  and  aspirations . 

Froude  wrote  a  great  deal  besides  :  books,  of  no  great  sub- 
stance, on  Caesar  and  on  Luther  ;  a  novel,  The  Two  Chiefs  of 
Dunboy  ;  a  sketch  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  ;  and  minor  studies  in 
his  earlier  field,  like  The  Divorce  of  Catherine  of  Arr agon  (1891). 
In  1892  he  followed  Freeman  in  the  Oxford  chair,  and  showed 
himself  once  more  an  artist,  not  only  in  words,  but  in  the  craft 
of  half -popular,  half -academic  lecturing.  Among  his  courses 
were  that  on  The  English  Seamen,  already  touched  upon  ;  and 
there  were  others,  less  durable  in  print,  on  Erasmus  and  on  the 
Council  of  Trent.  Froude's  uncritical  habit  was  now  an  old 
story  ;  but  it  did  not  much  trouble  the  hearers  whom  he  had 
in  mind.  His  dealings  with  the  memory  of  the  Carlyles  have 
been  described  in  a  former  chapter,  and  belong  to  the  early 
eighties.  In  literary  skill,  unluckily,  they  are  excelled  by  none 
of  his  writings  ;  the  English  is  of  the  purest  and  simplest. 
Froude  has  the  art  of  making  everything  he  says  appear  self- 
evident,  until  it  is  examined  ;  and  when  he  is  right,  it  is  the 
truth  which  becomes  self  evident,  clothed  in  impeccable  form. 

The  character  of  Frouilos  style  is  by  now  evident.  It  has 
an  ineffaceable  Oxford  stamp.  His  English  is  not  curious  and 
inlaid  like  Pater's,  nor  is  it  conscious  like  Matthew  Arnold's  ; 
it  does  not  crutch  itself  on  formulae  and  reiterated  phrase. 
It  is  not  Ruskinian.     It  is  natural  to  think  of  Newman,  with 


144  FROUDE 

his  plainness,  ease,  and  melody,  as  Froude's  model ;  and  such, 
in  some  degree,  Newman  must  have  been.  But  it  is  probably 
truer  to  regard  both  writers  as  carrying  to  perfection  a  variety, 
which  was  cherished  and  encouraged  at  Oxford,  and  of  which 
the  animating  principle,  besides  the  love  of  purity  and  elegance, 
and  a  corresponding  dislike  of  rhetorical  tricks,  may  be  found 
simply  in  the  wish  to  remove  all  obstacles  between  the  writer  and 
the  reader  :  the  old  aim,  in  fact,  of  Addison,  Law,  and  Hume. 
Other  and  diverse  examples  are  found  in  the  contemporary 
styles  of  Pattison  and  of  Jowett.  The  plain  tradition,  academic- 
ally touched,  and  imaginatively  too,  such  is  Froude's  inspiration. 
There  are  few  good  writers  from  whom  the  meaning  of  a  whole 
page  can  be  gathered  in  a  quicker  flash.  This,  it  may  be  said, 
is  but  the  gift  of  the  superlative  journalist  ;  and  Froude  is  often 
no  more  than  that.  He  has  the  defects  of  the  type .  We  glide 
on  through  his  pages  hardly  noticing  our  progress,  and  are 
suddenly  jarred,  when  our  judgement  asserts  itself,  and  some 
laxity  of  thought  is  perceived,  or  some  inaccuracy  of  fact 
detected ;  and  our  confidence,  after  a  time,  is  impaired  or  ruined. 
But  Froude's  assurance  never  deserts  him,  for  he  is  honestly 
deceived  by  prejudice,  and  also  by  his  own  art  and  skill.  Yet 
a  certain  fineness  and  delicacy  of  speech  seldom  quit  him. 
His  rhythm  and  music  too  are  his  own,  and  of  no  little  variety. 
He  passes  the  difficult  test,  that  it  is  impossible  to  imitate  or 
parody  him,  any  more  than  Goldsmith  or  Thackeray.  He  is 
thus  at  the  opposite  extreme  to  Carlyle  ;  and  in  absorbing  his 
master's  ideas,  Froude  may  well  have  made  up  his  mind  wholly 
to  avoid  his  master's  manner. 


CHAPTER   VII 
OTHER  HISTORIANS 


In  our  present  chronicle  there  is  no  Gibbon,  no  Ranke,  and  no 
Mommsen  ;  but  there  are  the  three  writers  of,  great  mark 
already  reviewed  ;  there  are  the  historians  of  definitely  philo- 
sophic bent,  described  in  the  fourth  chapter  ;  and  many  other 
names  remain,  which  it  is  hard  to  select  and  classify.  The 
choice  becomes  no  easier  as  the  century  advances.  The  general 
proficiency  of  historical  authors  increases,  to  an  almost  fatal 
degree  ;  and  a  kind  of  adequate,  colourless,  impersonal  style, 
a  style-of-all-work,  becomes  common  property.  This  body  of 
work  shades  off  at  one  end  into  mere  compilation,  or  into  matter 
of  purely  scientific  value  ;  but  at  the  upper  end  it  runs,  without 
any  fixed  frontiers,  into  work  of  individual  note  and  power, 
which  is  still  alive  and  calls  for  record.  Every  degree  and 
combination  are  found  of  scientific  capacity  and  literary  gift. 
In  a  survey  of  letters  it  is  well  to  keep  on  the  safe  side,  and 
rather  to  omit  some  worthy  than  to  include  much  inferior 
writing.  But  the  chapter  is  a  fruitful  and  honourable  one  in 
literature  as  well  as  in  historiography.  The  chief  historians  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  along  with  Milman,  may  be  referred  to  first  ; 
next,  the  later,  more  avowedly  scientific  school,  who  are  mainly 
though  not  wholly  concerned  with  British  history  ;  and  lastly, 
two  men  of  letters,  Napier  and  Kinglake,  who  shared  in,  or 
were  close  to,  the  great  affairs  which  they  describe. 

IT 

To  Connop  Thirlwall 1  (1797-1875),  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  and 
one  of  the  leaders  of  the  historical  revival  in  England,  Mill 
pays  a  high  tribute  in  his  Autobiography  ;  and  Thirlwall's 
force  of  brain  and  speech  impressed  all  his  contemporaries. 
The  best -known  fruit  of  his  humaner  studies  is  his  early  paper, 
published  in  the  Philological  Museum,  on  The  Irony  of  Sophocles. 
Thirlwall  extends  the  sense  of  the  term  irony  to  the  detached 
temper  of  a  judge  who  hears  contending  parties.  So  too,  in 
VOL.  i.  K 


146  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

the  Antigone,  the  spokesman  of  each  of  the  eternal  principles, 
law  on  one  side  and  piety  on  the  other,  states  a  case.  The 
point  of  view  recalls  that  of  Hegel  in  his  Msihetik,  which  was 
published  about  the  same  time.  But  the  more  familiar  sense 
of  '  irony  '  is  naturally  exemplified  from  the  CEdipus  Rex,  where 
the  words  of  the  tragic  sufferer  have  another  meaning  for  the 
audience.  The  grave  and  rigorous  style  of  Thirlwall  is  already 
seen  in  this  justly  famous  essay.  His  liberal  ideas  in  the 
matter  of  university  tests  drove  him  from  his  post  in  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge  ;  he  went  into  a  country  living,  and  became 
bishop  in  1840.  Thirlwall  was  a  linguist,  and  could  preach  to 
his  flock  in  their  native  Welsh.  He  was  a  pioneer  in  England 
of  German  lore  and  letters  ;  and  translated,  along  with  Julius 
Hare,  two  volumes  of  Niebuhr's  History  of  Rome.  His  own 
History  of  Greece,  preceding  Grote's  (1845-56),  appeared  in 
eight  volumes  (1835-44)  ;  a  new  and  enlarged  edition  was 
complete  by  1852.  Thirlwall  did  not  write  much  else  except 
sermons,  episcopal  charges  (a  form  of  composition  in  which  he 
excelled),  a  small  sheaf  of  essays,  and  a  number  of  excellent 
letters . 

The  History  of  Greece  is  severely  planned  and  proportioned, 
from  the  opening  geographical  survey  down  to  the  Roman 
conquest.  The  backbone  of  Thirl  wall's  chronicle,  as  of  Grote's, 
is  political ;  but  the  politics  are  those  of  long  ago,  with  no 
special  application  for  to-day,  and  they  are  judged  without 
passion,  bias,  or  visible  preferences.  The  writer  is  equitable 
and  remote,  a  judge  who  has  never  been  an  advocate.  He 
concentrates  on  his  story,  and  has  few  digressions  on  specu- 
lation, art,  or  letters.  His  sketch  of  Athenian  tragedy  has 
some  warmth  of  colouring,  but  is  all  too  brief.  His  descrip- 
tions of  the  great  figures,  Pericles  and  Alcibiades,  have  a  classical 
concision,  but  they  are  descriptions  rather  than  portraits.  The 
general  effect  is  therefore  somewhat  grey,  though  not  tame  ; 
but,  in  requital,  Thirlwall  is  positively  unable  to  care  for  any- 
thing but  the  truth,  and  he  is  the  master  of  a  pure  and  pointed, 
if  restrained,  style.  Only  too  modest,  he  hailed  Grote's  per- 
formance as  entirely  above  his  own.  He  had,  however,  done 
much  more  than  till  the  ground,  and  had  embodied  his  German 
reading  attentively  :  and  his  book  abides,  though  the  study 
of  Greek  antiquity  has  been  transformed  since  his  day. 

Thirlwall's  mind  and  temper  are  much  more  freely  disclosed 
in  his  correspondence,  which  includes  the  posthumously  printed 
Letters  to  a  Friend.  To  this  lucky  young  Welsh  lady,  Miss 
Johns,  the  Bishop  discourses,  in  his  keen  finished  manner, 


THIRLWALL  147 

upon  many  things  :  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope,  the  argu- 
ments for  immortality,  the  breakfasts  of  Monckton  Milnes, 
the  possible  end  of  the  world,  the  ethics  of  suicide,  and  his 
interview  with  Queen  Victoria.  His  mind,  though  devout,  is 
not  specially  ecclesiastical  in  tone  ;  it  is  sure  and  balanced, 
and  also  marked  by  a  sharp  independence  of  view.  He  some- 
times lets  loose  an  irony,  not  of  the  Sophoclean  kind,  but 
highly  pertinent.  It  is  pleasant  to  come  on  his  dislikes  and 
prejudices,  when  he  drops  the  crozier  for  the  small-sword. 
Amongst  the  great  Germans  there  was  one  whom  he  failed  to 
admire  : 

I  have  so  much  faith  in  the  force  of  truth  as  to  believe  that  sooner 
or  later  Hegel's  name  will  only  be  redeemed  from  universal  con- 
tempt by  the  recollection  of  the  immense  mischief  he  has  done. 

It  is  to  be  wished  that  Thirlwall  had  written  an  imaginary 
conversation  between  Cardinal  Newman  and  Socrates,  whom  he 
exalts  above  all  other  Greeks  :  we  can  guess  from  the  following 
sentences  how  it  might  have  run  : 

His  mind  was  essentially  sceptical  and  sophistical,  endowed  with 
various  talents  in  an  eminent  degree,  but  not  with  the  power  of 
taking  firm  hold  on  either  speculative  or  historical  truth.  Yet  his 
craving  for  truth  was  strong  in  proportion  to  the  purity  of  his  life 
and  convictions.  He  felt  that  he  was  entirely  unable  to  satisfy 
this  craving  by  any  mental  operations  of  his  own.  .  .  .  Therefore 
he  was  irresistibly  impelled  [to  seek  an  infallible  guide,  etc.].  No 
doubt  this  was  an  act  of  pure  self-will.  He  bowed  to  an  image 
which  he  had  first  himself  set  up.  There  was  at  once  his  strength 
and  his  weakness.  He  could  deceive  himself  and  could  not  help 
letting  himself  be  deceived.  .  .  .  [As  to  Newman's  belief  in  angels] 
Surely  it  is  one  thing  to  belieAe  that  all  is  regulated  by  a  Supreme 
Will,  and  another  thing  to  believe  that  this  Will  employs  a  machinery 
like  that  of  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

Thirlwall's  less  formidable  side  is  seen  in  his  delight  in  The 
Earthly  Paradise  ;  the  latter  poem  is  '  even  more  delicious  '  than 
the  Jason,  and 

a  godsend  when  I  can  take  it  out  on  the  grass  and  read  it,  while 
the  haymakers  are  at  work,  and  the  dear  horse  is  pacing  up  and 
down  quite  unconscious  of  the  help  he  is  giving.  The  '  season  '  is 
not  complete  without  such  a  reading  in  harmony  with  it. 

The  philosophic  Radicals  aimed  at  a  rational  recast  of  law  ; 
they  tried  to  explore  the  natural  history  of  the  individual  mind, 
and  to  base  a  programme  of  social  reform  on  sound  principles 


148  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

of  economy.  The  achievement  of  George  Grote  x  (1794-1871) 
was  to  apply  their  scientific  method,  and  their  democratic 
canons  to  the  study  of  ancient  history.  William  Mitford,  the 
chief  English  pioneer  in  this  field,  whose  History  of  Greece  (1784- 
1810),  and  especially  of  Athens,  reflects  the  Tory  reaction  of 
his  time,  was  the  provoker  of  Grote  ;  who  in  1826  fired  a  shot 
into  his  bows  in  the  Westminster,  and  whose  own  History  was 
partly  written  as  a  corrective  to  Mitford's.  It  is,  he  wrote 
long  afterwards, 

so  much  the  custom,  in  dealing  with  the  Grecian  history,  to  presume 
the  Athenian  people  to  be  a  set  of  children  or  madmen,  whose 
feelings  it  is  not  worth  while  to  try  and  account  for  .  .  . 

whereas  in  truth  Athenian  politics  are  present  history,  and  the 
world's  great  object-lesson  in  democratic  experiment.  It  was 
well  that  Grote  waited  twenty  years  over  his  task  ;  the  first 
two  volumes  of  his  twelve  did  not  appear  till  1845,  and  the  book 
was  not  completed  till  1856.  He  had  meantime  plunged  into 
affairs.  He  had  visited  the  Paris  liberals,  and  had  sat  for  nine 
years  in  the  Commons,  only  retiring  when  he  found  that  the 
cause  of  the  philosophic  party  was  outworn.  He  had  written 
long  before  (1821,  1831)  on  parliamentary  reform.  There  could 
be  no  better  schooling  ;  nor  was  Grote 's  life  as  a  banker  alien 
to  the  student  of  Greek  finance.  He  knew  what  is  meant  by 
the  swirl  of  parties  and  the  fight  of  a  minority,  and  how  law  is 
battered  into  shape  by  open  discussion.  Hence  the  air  of 
great  events  circulates  through  his  book  ;  and  his  writing, 
though  heavy  and  buckram  in  style,  is  often  lighted  up  by 
modern  instances.  He  compares  the  license  of  the  sedition- 
stricken  '  Korkyra '  with  that  of  revolutionary  France,  and  finds 
modern  French  parallel  to  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermse. 

Grote 's  limitations,  which  are  now  well  understood,  have  by 
no  means  left  his  work  obsolete.  As  Freeman  said  of  Gibbon, 
'  whoever  else  is  read,  he  must  be  read  too.'  Authentic 
history  begins,  for  him,  late  in  the  eighth  century  ;  the  dis- 
covery of  iEgean  culture  now  places  the  beginnings,  in  some 
sense,  two  thousand  years  earlier.  Modern  archaeology  has 
been  born,  Aristotle's  book  on  the  constitution  of  Athens  has 
been  found,  comparative  mythology  has  transformed  the  study 
of  beliefs  ;  and  Grote,  in  the  light  of  it  all,  has  had  to  be  re- 
edited.  But  his  work,  or  great  and  solid  blocks  of  it,  must 
remain.  His  injustice  to  some  of  the  autocratic  states,  and 
many  details  in  his  book,  have  been  corrected.  That  culture, 
art,  and  letters  figure  little  except  as  illustrations  of  his  political 


GROTE'S  HISTORY  149 

text  is,  after  all,  it  has  justly  been  said,  only  a  criticism  of  his 
title.  What  endures  is  his  story  of  the  great  men,  military 
events,  and  constitutional  struggles  of  the  fifth  century.  Even 
his  account  of  the  myths,  though  superseded,  is  full  of  shrewd- 
ness ;  his  analysis  of  the  state  of  mind  expressed  in  the  phrase 
fingunt  simul  creduntque  strikes  deep,  and  marks  a  distinct 
advance  on  the  older  view  that  the  priests,  or  '  godsmiths,' 
invented  the  gods  ;  I  have  already  noted  how  John  Mill 
welcomed  Grote's  exposition  of  this  subject. 

The  History  of  Greece,  in  one  sense,  is  literature  only  by 
courtesy.  It  is  not  elegantly  written,  though  it  is  plain  and 
massive  in  construction.  Grote  suffers  because  his  business 
is  to  put  two  great  writers,  his  two  chief  authorities,  into  his 
own  decidedly  creaking  English.  Herodotus  becomes  heavy  in 
hand,  and  'the  condensed  and  burning  phrases  of  Thucydides,' 
as  Grote  calls  them,  lose  their  virtue.  We  have  to  face  expres- 
sions like  '  the  reciprocal  indulgence  of  individual  diversity.' 
Yet  somehow  we  read  Grote,  and  that  not  merely  for  his  matter. 
He  swings  along  in  an  ugly,  powerful  stride.  The  greatness  of 
the  subject  does  get  into  his  language.  His  chapters  on  the 
plague,  on  the  spirit  and  work  of  Pericles,  and  on  the  Sicilian 
tragedy,  are  worthily  written,  He  had  never  been  to  Greece, 
he  does  not  describe  scenery  ;  like  all  his  school,  he  rather 
thinks  than  sees  ;  yet  he  communicates  the  passion  of  the 
scene.  His  philosophical  interests  and  gifts,  hardly  repre- 
sented in  his  History  save  in  his  well-known  plea  for  the 
Sophists,  appear  in  his  later  studies  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 
His  Minor  Works,  edited  by  Bain  in  1873,  throw  light  on  his 
mind  in  other  ways  ;  but  the  best  record  is  The  Personal  Life 
of  George  Grote  (1873),  written  by  his  notable  and  formidable 
wife.  The  history  of  their  love  affair,  and  of  the  doings  of  the 
villain  of  the  piece  ;  the  historical  emotion  betrayed  by  Grote 
at  Psestum,  Rome,  and  Terracina  ;  the  learned  intercourse  in 
talk,  or  in  dignified  correspondence,  with  Lewis,  Hallam,  and 
Moles  worth  ;  Mrs.  Grote's  claim,  seemingly  incorrect,  that  she 
inspired  the  writing  of  the  History  ;  and  Grote's  later  falling 
away  from  the  true  faith  in  the  matter  of  republicanism  and 
the  ballot  ;  are  all  described  with  a  vigour,  pedantry,  and 
naivete  which  make  the  memoir  one  of  the  most  amusing  of  the 
period. 

A  true  link  between  the  age  of  romance  and  the  spirit  of 
historical  science  is  to  be  found  in  the  labours  of  George  Finlay * 
(1799-1876).  A  strong-headed  young  Scot  with  some  legal 
training,  and  already  filled  with  a  lifelong  passion  for  Greece 


150  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

and  its  past,  Pinlay  drifted  in  1823  to  Cephalonia,  volunteered 
as  a  Philhellene,  and  fell  in  with  Byron. 

During  the  two  months  I  remained  at  Mesolonghi,  I  spent  almost 
every  evening  with  Lord  Byron,  who,  Mr.  Parry  says  in  his  book, 
wasted  too  much  of  his  time  in  conversation  with  Mr.  Finlay  and 
such  light  and  frivolous  persons.  I  left  Mesolonghi  nine  days  before 
Lord  Byron's  death. 

After  some  adventures  Finlay  was  invalided  home,  but  was  in 
Greece  again  a  few  years  later  under  the  rule  of  Capodistrias. 
Wishing  to  '  help  in  the  material  improvement  of  the  country,' 
he  bought  land  in  Attica,  and  lost  '  his  money  and  his  labour  ' 
under  the  reign  of  Otho.  Then  he  'planned  writing  a  true 
history  of  the  Greek  Revolution  in  such  a  way  as  to  exhibit 
the  condition  of  the  people.'  This  portion  of  his  work,  where 
Finlay  speaks  with  the  liveliness  and  honesty,  if  sometimes 
with  the  prejudice,  of  an  eye-witness,1  was  the  latest  (1862)  to 
appear  during  his  lifetime,  which  was  mostly  spent  in  Greece 
itself.  Thinking  backwards,  he  conceived  and  gradually  exe- 
cuted his  great  scheme  of  describing  the  age-long  preparation 
for  this  event,  namely  the  '  history  of  Greece  under  foreign 
domination  '  for  two  thousand  years.  The  story  begins  about 
140  B.C.,  or  rather,  in  outline,  from  the  death  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  and  finally  goes  down  to  a.d.  1864.  Finlay's  work 
appeared  in  instalments,  the  arrangement  of  which  causes 
some  perplexity,  from  1844  to  1877  ;  after  he  reaches  1453  the 
form  of  chronological  essay  gives  way  to  that  of  narrative. 

By  his  account,  above  all,  of  the  Byzantine  empire,  Finlay 
established  his  fame  as  a  true  pioneer  with  a  sound  method, 
and  he  is  always  saluted  by  those  who  have  built  on  his  labours. 
He  is  throughout  distinguished  by  his  grasp  of  economics, 
statistics,  numismatics,  and  institutional  history.  No  book  is 
a  better  purging  medicine  for  the  cheap  idealist.  '  Good  roads 
and  commodious  passage -boats  have  a  more  direct  connexion 
with  the  development  of  human  culture,  as  we  see  it  reflected 
in  the  works  of  Phidias  and  Sophocles,  than  is  generally 
believed.'  He  broke  up  soil  over  which  Gibbon  had  passed 
more  swiftly  and  with  another  aim  ;  and  he  often  seems  to  be 
quietly  correcting  Gibbon,  to  whom  he  is  opposed  in  political 
and  religious  temper.  He  is  always  thinking  of  the  '  condition 
of  the  people  '  ;  and  he  has  the  democratic  faith — chastened 
and  yet  confirmed  by  his  long,  sombre,  and,  as  he  calls  it, 
'  uninviting  '  survey  of  centuries  of  slavery — in  the  popular 
and  municipal  institutions  that  have  kept  the  Greek  nation 


FINLAY  151 

alive  all  that  while.  He  is  also  a  believer  ;  and,  while  fair  to 
the  Moslem  and  cool  to  the  hierarchy,  he  drives  home  the 
historic  service  of  Christian  ethics  in  preserving  the  seed  of 
national  unity.1  Just  laws  and  government  are  the  only 
political  antiseptic  ;  this  truth,  while  reviewing  age  after  age, 
Finlay  enforces  with  a  certain  smouldering  eloquence.  He  was 
also  the  first  writer  clearly  to  point  out  the  continuity  of  race, 
institutions,  language,  and  territory,  in  the  case  of  '  the  only 
existing  representatives  of  the  ancient  world.' 

Finlay  has  some  of  the  aims,  qualities,  and  drawbacks  of 
Thucydides.  He  mostly  eschews  rhythm  and  the  graces,2 
and  cares  only  to  pack  his  story  with  meaning.  He  rewrote 
much  for  the  sake  of  greater  compression  ;  he  taxes  the  atten- 
tion, but  he  keeps  it.  Yet  he  is  beguiled  by  vivid  incident  ; 
his  stories  of  the  Empress  Eudocia,  and  of  the  anarchy  which 
he  had  himself  beheld  at  Athens,  are  well  told  ;  and  his  survey 
of  the  first  Byzantine  sovereigns  3  rings  with  sonorous  and 
well-placed  names,  like  a  page  of  Macaulay.  Byron  or  Landor 
would  hardly  have  treated  in  a  livelier  way,  or  with  more  of  the 
spirit  of  romance,  the  fortunes  of  Andronicus  the  First.  But 
Finlay's  strength  lies  in  the  interweaving  of  good  narrative  with 
political  reflections  that  grow  naturally  out  of  the  particulars 
and  rise  above  them.  A  clue  to  his  sustaining  creed  and  a 
brief  example  of  his  manner  may  be  found  in  his  passage  on 
the  ill  doings  of  the  timariots  : 

The  permanent  laws  of  man's  social  existence  operate  unceasingly, 
and  destroy  every  distinctive  privilege  which  separates  one  class  of 
man  as  a  caste  from  the  rest  of  the  community,  in  violation  of  the 
immutable  principles  of  equity.  Heaven  tolerates  temporary  in- 
justice, committed  by  individual  tyrants,  to  the  wildest  excesses  of 
iniquity  ;  but  history  proves  that  Divine  Providence  has  endowed 
society  with  an  irresistible  power  of  expansion,  which  gradually 
effaces  every  permanent  infraction  of  the  principles  of  justice  by 
human  legislation.  The  laws  of  Lycurgus  expired  before  the 
Spartan  state,  and  the  corps  of  janissaries  possessed  more  vitality 
than  the  tribute  of  Christian  children.4 

The  Greek  re  volution, ending  after  many  days  in  constitutional 
government,  seems  to  Finlay  a  long -delayed  design  of  Pro- 
vidence, of  whom  the  peasantry  and  people,  not  the  officials 
or  diplomatists,  have  been  the  chosen  instruments.  '  The  best 
despot  cannot  in  the  end  prevent  so  much  evil  as  a  moderately 
good  representative  system.'  His  creed  was  thus  not  a  mere 
doctrine,  but,  unlike  that  of  the  older  radicals,  a  conclusion 
from  historic  data  ;   and  his  disenchanted  view  of  the  Greeks, 


152  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

and  the  stern  melancholy  with  which  he  describes  their  vices 
and  their  long  durance  vile,  really  plant  his  confidence  in  their 
destiny  upon  a  firmer  basis.  Could  he  have  brought  his 
narrative  up  to  1920,  Finlay  would  have  recorded  yet  more 
disappointments,  but  his  faith  would  yet  again  be  brighter. 
His  chronicle  is  the  plain  prose  of  Byron's  cry  that  '  the  peoples 
will  conquer  in  the  end.' 

m 

Hare    and   Thirlwall's   translation    (1828-32)    of    Niebuhr's 
History  of  Rome,  helped  to  transform  for  English  scholars  the 
whole  conception  of  historical  inquiry.    Niebuhr  had  himself 
owed  much  to  his  acquaintance  with  British  institutions,  and 
the  debt  was  now  to  be  repaid.     He  taught  not  only  by  the 
example  of  his  imaginative  and  constructive  power  ;   he  made 
an  epoch  in  the  critical  study  of  historical  material.     He  has 
even  been  described  as  '  the  scholar  who  raised  history  from  a 
subordinate  place  to  the  dignity  of  an  independent  science.' 
His  greatest  disciple  in  this  country  was  Thomas  Arnold 1  (1795- 
1842),  who  from    1828  onwards  was  headmaster  of  Rugby, 
and  in  1841  became  Regius  Professor  of  History  at  Oxford. 
Devoted  from  the  first  to   history  and  the  classics,  Arnold 
figured,  in  his  earlier  years  at  Oriel,  chiefly  as  a  divine  :  the  ally 
of  Whately,  Hampden,  and  the  broad  churchmen  (see  Ch.  viii.), 
he  was  the  foe  of  the  Tract  arians,  whom  he  held  in  a  deep  and 
continuous  abhorrence.     His  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review 
on  The  Oxford  Malignants  might  have  served  his  son  Matthew 
for   a  text   on  the   virtue   of  urbanity.     A  priesthood,  says 
Thomas  Arnold,  in  his  muscular  way,  is  '  the  first  and  worst 
error  of  Antichrist.'     His  gestures  in  debate  are  those  of  the 
irate  headmaster,  brandishing  his  professional  weapon.  Arnold's 
own  ecclesiastical  dream  recalls,  and  possibly  derives  from,  that 
of  Coleridge.      Church  and  state  are  to  be  one,  the  church 
being  the  soul  of  the  state,  and  Christian  ethics  the  right  main- 
spring of  politics  ;  2  in  this  way  both  sacerdotalism  and  Erastian- 
ism  are  to  lose  their  sting.     Subscription  is  to  be  on  generous 
terms,  but  is  to  exclude  Romans,  Unitarians,  and  Jews.     All 
citizens  must  promise  obedience,  though  they  must  not  be 
forced  to  avow  belief.     The  jarring  creeds  must  bury  smaller 
differences   and   concentrate   on  fundamentals.     The   guiding 
class  is  to  be  a  spiritual  aristocracy,  both  lay  and  learned,  like 
the  '  clerisy  '  imagined  by  Coleridge.     This  ideal  is  sketched  in 
Arnold's  letters,  articles,  and  lectures,  and  in  his  Fragment  on 


THOMAS  ARNOLD  153 

the  Church.     Something  like  it  is  to  be  found  long  afterwards 
in  Seeley's  Natural  Religion. 

Arnold's  management  of  Rugby,  and  the  lofty,  masculine 
spirit  which  he  inspired,  along  with  much  true  culture,  into 
his  boys,  has  powerfully  affected  the  character  of  the  English 
ruling  classes.     Sometimes,  no  doubt,  as  in  the  case  of  the  sensi- 
tive Clough,  that  spirit  could   be  charged  with   encouraging 
overstrain,  or  in  some  characters  with  puffing  up  moral  self- 
importance.     But  Arnold  really  taught  the  coming  generation 
'  manners,  freedom,  virtue,  power.'     His  sermons  are  raised 
into  eloquence  by  the  temper  which  his  son  delineates  in  the 
verse  of  Rugby  Chapel.     He  also  found  time  to  make  himself, 
what  he  hardly  was  by  nature ,  a  man  of  letters .    His  claim  to  the 
title  rests,  above  all,  on  his  unfinished  History  of  Rome  (1838-43). 
He  had  already  produced  a  valuable  edition  of  Thucydides,  with 
a  commentary  which  is  full  of  life.     In  1845,  after  his  death, 
appeared  the  History  of  the  Later  Roman  Commonwealth ;  but 
his  masterpiece   is  admitted  to  be  the  third  volume  of  the 
original  History,  containing  the  story  of  the  second  Punic  War. 
Here,  it  has  been  said, '  his  powers  of  thought  and  expression 
were  mature,  and  he  was  no  longer  impeded  by  his  loyalty  to 
Niebuhr.'     In  the  earlier  volumes,  especially  in  the  first,  he 
had  made  it  his  mission  to  put  the  conclusions  of  Niebuhr  into 
popular  shape,  though  in  an  independent  spirit.     But  the  story 
at  last  rises  to  an  epical  force  and  fife,  as  the  contrast  deepens 
between  the  Mario wesque  figure  of  the  pursuing  Hannibal, 
and  the  collective  courage  and  policy  of  the  senate.     Arnold 
almost  thinks  of  Rome  as  a  person — '  thy  daemon,  that 's  thy 
spirit  that  keeps  thee  '  ;   but  he  can  find  no  individual  Roman 
worthy  to  compare  with  Hannibal  until  he  comes  to  Scipio. 
The  historian  died  before  he  reached  the  date  of  Zama,  but 
the  torso  of  his  work  is  little  impaired.     He  had  meant  at  first 
to  prolong  the  story  down  to  Charlemagne. 

In  Arnold's  conception  of  history  there  is  a  marked  admix- 
ture of  theology.  The  fall  of  Hannibal  is  the  work  of  Provi- 
dence, operating  chiefly  through  the  integrity  and  firmness  of 
the  Roman  spirit.  But  the  Caesars,  both  Julius  and  Augustus, 
who  are  unscrupulous  as  to  means  and  methods,  are  hostile  to 
the  divine  purposes.  This  view  is  urged,  to  the  point  of 
fanaticism,  in  some  ruder  pages  of  earlier  composition,  which 
describe  the  latter  days  of  the  Republic.  Arnold  thus  stands 
at  the  opposite  pole  to  Mommsen,  who  judges  by  results  and 
Realpolitik.  The  clerical  or  didactic  reading  of  history  is  too 
rigid  when  applied  to  a  complex  many-sided  civilisation  ;   but 


154  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

when  it  is  enlisted  in  the  praise  of  senatorial  and  republican 
virtue  it  is  less  out  of  place.  And  in  his  chosen  field  Arnold 
shows  much  impartiality.  With  all  his  modern  instincts,  he  is 
full  of  admiration  for  the  Roman  aristocracy  which  held  the 
city,  and  he  thinks  that  an  aristocracy,  if  only  it  can  be  good 
and  generous,  may  be  the  best  rulers  of  all ;  like  his  own  virtu- 
ous school  prefects,  brave,  incorruptible,  severe,  conscientious, 
well-educated,  and  not  too  clever. 

'  There  floats  before  me  an  image  of  power  and  beauty  in 
history,'  wrote  Arnold  in  1840,  'which  I  cannot  in  any  way 
realise,'  and  in  the  next  year  he  begins  to  regard  his  task  '  with 
something  of  an  artist's  feeling,  as  to  the  composition  and 
arrangement  of  it.'  These  two  passages  tell  us  something  of 
his  literary  gifts.  His  style  is  not  wanting  in  variety.  The 
more  mythical  tales,  like  that  of  the  Sabines,  he  deliberately 
tells  in  what  he  calls  a  '  more  antiquated  '  diction  than  the 
rest.  It  is  an  excellent  diction  for  the  purpose,  and  unaffected  ; 
it  is  meant  to  mark  the  popular,  invented  quality  of  the  stories. 
The  regular  style  of  the  History  is,  in  its  own  kind,  hard  to  excel. 
It  is  not  great  and  strange,  like  Carlyle's,  nor  pleasing  and  in- 
sidious like  Froude's,  nor  pyrotechnical  like  Kinglake's  ;  nor 
is  it  heavy,  or  tame,  or  cold,  or  stiff  ;  vices  of  which  the  examples 
are  too  many  to  specify.  It  is  well  fitted  for  describing  hard 
facts,  like  the  topography  and  geography  for  which  Arnold  had 
an  exceptionally  keen  eye,  and  also  for  military  operations.  It 
is  good  for  character-drawing,  and  for  dramatic  incident  ;  its 
terseness  suits  the  high,  sententious  passages.  In  the  great 
episodes,  like  the  battle  of  the  Trasimene  and  the  siege  of 
Syracuse,  it  catches  the  grandeur  of  the  subject.  There  is 
evidence  that  Arnold  paid  more  heed  to  finish  as  he  proceeded 
with  his  work.  The  Homeric  quality  of  his  narrative  is  perhaps 
best  seen  in  the  chapter  on  the  battle  of  the  Metaurus  ;  the 
writer's  grasp  of  character,  in  his  portrait  of  Scipio  ;  and  his 
historic  vision,  and  the  compass  of  his  period,  in  such  a  passage 
as  the  following  : 

He  who  grieves  over  the  battle  of  Zama  should  carry  on  his 
thoughts  to  a  period  thirty  years  later,  when  Hannibal  must,  in 
the  course  of  nature,  have  been  dead,  and  consider  how  that  isolated 
Phoenician  city  of  Carthage  was  fitted  to  receive  and  consolidate 
the  civilisation  of  Greece,  or  by  its  laws  and  institutions  to  bind 
together  barbarians  of  every  race  and  language  into  an  organised 
empire,  and  prepare  them  for  becoming,  when  that  empire  was  dis- 
solved, the  free  members  of  the  commonwealth  of  Christian  Europe. 
(Ch.  xlii.) 


MERIVALE— MILMAN  1 55 

The  labours  of  Arnold  were  taken  up  and  continued,  though 
in  another  style  and  spirit,  by  Charles  Merivale  (1808-93), 
Dean  of  Ely,  the  writer  of  a  History  of  the  Romans  under  the 
Empire  (1850-64).  One  quarter  of  the  work,  in  spite  of  the 
title,  is  given  to  the  prelude  of  thirty  years  ;  and  this  portion 
Merivale  recast  for  the  general  reader  in  the  attractive  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Republic  (1853)  ;  which  opens,  some  eighty  years 
earlier  still,  like  a  story  by  a  follower  of  Scott,  with  '  Tiberius 
Gracchus,  a  young  plebeian,  of  the  noble  family  of  the  Sem- 
pronii,  traversing  Etruria  in  the 'year  of  the  city  617.'  The 
story  of  a  hundred  years  marches  well  and  is  ably  condensed  ; 
it  closes  with  the  arrival  of  Augustus,  and  with  admiring  excuses 
for  Julius  Caesar,  which  contrast  almost  absurdly  with  Arnold's 
censures.  These  opinions  are  developed  more  formally  in  the 
larger  work,  which  is  written  in  the  same  gently  ornate  fashion, 
and  which  carries  the  story  down  to  the  Antonines.  Merivale 
is  praised  for  his  sound  knowledge  of  all  the  literary  sources  ; 
he  wrote  other  historical  works,  and  was  an  accomplished 
classical  scholar;  he  turned  the  Iliad  into  rhyme,  and  Keats 's 
Hyperion  into  Latin  verse.  '  He  was  pre-Mommsen,'  it  has 
been  said,  '  in  his  unavoidable  neglect  of  epigraphic  material,' 
and  so  belongs  to  a  past  school.  But,  at  the  date  of  his  writing, 
none  had  covered  the  same  ground  with  any  sufficiency.  His 
work  is  not  only  a  careful  narrative,  but  a  reasoned  eulogy, 
or  at  least  vindication,  of  the  earty  empire,  of  the  pax  Romana, 
and  of  monarchical  institutions  generally.  As  a  writer,  he  has 
less  nerve  and  style  than  many  of  the  other  historians  men- 
tioned in  these  sections  ;  but  he  does  not  want  for  dignity. 

IV 

The  plays  of  Henry  Hart  Milman  (1791-1868)  were  written 
before  1830,  and  have  been  named  in  an  earlier  Survey.  They 
are  ardent,  ambitious,  Elizabethan,  and  their  afterglow  touches 
his  prose  again  and  again  into  a  tempered  richness.  In  1829 
Milman  commenced  historian  ;  but  his  History  of  the  Jews, 
like  his  History  of  Christianity  (1840),  which  ends  with  the 
abolition  of  paganism  in  the  empire,  provoked  some  alarm,  and 
is  said  to  have  delayed  his  preferment.  Like  Thirlwall,  Milman 
was  an  early  student  of  German  criticism  ;  his  tone  is  judicial, 
scientific,  and  up  to  a  point  naturalistic.  His  liberal  orthodoxy 
accepts  the  miraculous  element  quite  honestly,  but  in  a  thrifty 
spirit.  He  begins  to  treat  the  Jews  like  any  other  nation  or 
tribe,  and  their  records  like  any  other  literature.     He  protests 


156  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

against  Strauss  and  Renan,  but  on  critical  grounds,  and  not  in 
the  tones  of  the  pulpit.  He  is  very  devout,  and  quite  free  from 
unction  of  the  wrong  sort.  His  work  is  also  free  from  the 
evasions,  if  it  lacks  the  vision  and  suggestive  power,  of  the  later 
Ecce  Homo  (1865).  It  suffers,  no  doubt,  because  much  of  it  is 
a  dilution  of  the  scriptural  text  into  a  level  modern  paraphrase . 
Milman  manages  to  take  most  of  the  colour  out  of  the  life 
of  Christ,  and  is  more  at  his  ease  when  he  reaches  the  post- 
apostolic  age,  and  has  less  to  fear  from  comparison  with  his 
documents.  But  all  this  was  the  prelude  to  a  larger  achieve- 
ment .  The  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  '  including  that  of 
the  Popes  to  the  pontificate  of  Nicholas  v.,'  appeared  in  1854-5, 
when  Milman  had  for  some  years  held  the  deanery  of  St .  Paul's . 

Already,  in  1838,  he  had  edited  Gibbon,  and  his  edition  was 
long  to  hold  its  ground.  In  his  History  he  now  retold  part  of 
Gibbon's  story,  not  controversially,  but  by  way  of  a  silent 
readjustment.  To  Gibbon  the  historic  disputes  of  the  faith 
were  an  aimless  series  of  absurdities  which  delayed  the  march 
of  reason  ;  but  they  had  made,  and  marred,  secular  history,  and 
accordingly  they  demanded  a  lucid  and  ironical  exposition. 
Milman,  too,  often  seems  to  utter  under  his  breath  a  quiet 
tantum  religio  !  but  he  does  so  in  the  name  of  religion  itself  ;  and, 
moreover,  he  sees  the  great  controversies  as  stages  in  the  very 
march  of  reason,  and  as  conceived  in  the  only  terms  which 
reason,  at  each  successive  period,  could  command.  And  he 
sees,  throughout,  the  spirit  of  Christianity  surviving  persecu- 
tion and  bloodshed.  He  does  justice  to  the  most  doubtful 
instruments  of  Providence  with  anxious  candour.  Indeed  his 
history  is  a  sort  of  Decline  and  Fall ;  the  decline,  if  not  the  fall, 
of  Latin  Christianity  is  its  real  theme.  The  ten  centuries  of  his 
chronicle  are  the  prelude  to  the  rise  of  '  Teutonic  Christianity,' 
or  Protestantism  ;  and  of  this,  he  says  in  one  passage,  Latin 
Christianity  was  the  '  Avatar.'  The  ultimate  overthrow  of  the 
Latin  sacerdotal  monopoly,  after  it  had  done  its  divinely 
appointed  work  for  civilisation  and  the  human  spirit,  is  kept  in 
view  throughout. 

Milman  is  a  considerable  historian,  a  writer  of  many-sided 
competence.  He  can  tell  an  intricate  story,  or  a  simple  one, 
very  well.  His  pictures  of  the  First  Crusade,  or  of  the  Sicilian 
Vespers,  or  of  the  fortunes  of  Becket,  approve  his  skill.  His 
biographies  of  St.  Francis  and  of  Abelard  show  that  the  poet 
is  not  dead  in  him  ;  and  his  accounts  of  the  Northmen  and  of 
the  code  of  chivalry  are  full  of  catholic  sympathy.  He  is 
at  home,  too,  in  abstract  matter  ;   and  while  expounding  the 


MILMAN'S  LATIN  CHRISTIANITY— STUBBS      157 

great  heresies  he  is  careful  to  keep  in  mind  not  only  their 
arguments  but  their  sources  ;  as  he  puts  it,  '  divergencies  of 
religion,  where  men  are  really  religious  .  .  .  arise  from  the 
undue  domination  of  some  principle  or  element  in  human 
nature.'  Above  all,  he  excels  in  panoramic  views.  In  his  first 
chapter  he  divides  the  long  drama  into  a  dozen  or  more  acts, 
or  phases,  and  he  keeps  to  his  plan  ;  and  then,  in  his  ninth 
volume,  when  he  has  finished,  he  turns  and  surveys  the  mind  of 
Christendom  in  the  fourteenth  century,  very  summarily,  and 
often  avowedly  using  second-hand  sources,  but  with  an  im- 
pressive sweep  and  clearness.  For  the  great  schoolmen  his 
chief  authorities  are  in  French  and  German  ;  for  '  in  England,' 
he  laments,  '  we  have  no  guide,'  now  that  Dr.  Hampden,  who 
promised  so  well  in  his  article  on  Aquinas,  '  has  sunk  into  a 
quiet  Bishop.'  Milman  had  great  learning,  but  he  often  felt  at 
a  loss  for  tools.  The  huge  accumulation  of  knowledge  since 
his  time  it  would  be  absurd  to  regret ;  but  something  has  been 
lost,  if  the  day  has  departed  when  a  single  mind  could  venture 
to  stride  through  the  record  of  a  thousand  years. 

As  a  writer,  Milman  modestly  disclaims  all  competition  with 
Gibbon,  and  seems  to  guard  himself  against  any  imitation  of 
Gibbon's  style.  The  note  of  irony  is  rare.  There  is  no  very 
marked  manner  or  rhythm.  But  Milman  is  never  flat,  and  he 
has  no  tricks,  if  his  language  is  slightly  old-fashioned  and 
decanal.  His  sentences  are  often  long  and  accumulative,  but 
are  seldom  worked  up  into  formal  periods .  He  has  not  exactly 
Gibbon's  power  of  carrying  us  through  the  tiresome  parts  of 
the  story.  But  he  is  much  more  satisfying  than  the  pictorial 
Stanley,  and  more  convincing,  if  less  exciting,  than  his  friend 
Macaulay.  His  work  is  readable  as  well  as  honourable  and 
valuable,  if  it  lacks  the  absolute  stamp  of  decision  and 
distinction. 


The  commanding  position  of  William  Stubbs  1  (1825-1901) 
amongst  the  English  historical  scholars  of  his  time  is  founded 
not  only  on  his  immense  and  precise  erudition,  his  mastery  of 
textual  criticism,  and  his  judicial  weight  and  grasp,  but  also 
on  a  literary  gift  which,  though  to  some  extent  swamped  by 
his  material  or  buried  away  for  the  laity  in  his  massive  volumes, 
is  undeniable  and  arresting.  He  first  became  eminent  as  a 
church  historian  ;  then,  some  years  before  becoming  Professor 
of  Modern  History  at  Oxford,  a  post  which  he  held  from  1866 


158  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

to  1884,  he  began  his  long  list  of  contributions  to  the  Rolls 
series  {Chronicles  and  Memorials,  etc.),  which  contain  some  of  his 
most  learned,  vivid,  and  pointed  writing  ;  and  the  same  is 
true  of  his  introduction  to  the  edition  of  Select  Charters,  which 
appeared  in  1870.  His  most  continuous,  best-known,  and 
greatest  work,  The  Constitutional  History  of  England,  came  out 
in  three  volumes  (1873-8),  and  covers  the  whole  span  down  to 
1485.  It  handles  not  only  the  growth  and  structure  of  in- 
stitutions, but  almost  every  activity,  except  war,  of  the  body 
politic.  The  book  confirmed  Stubbs's  position  as  the  master, 
in  Britain,  of  the  scientific  band  of  historians,  and  won  him 
European  note.  The  style  is  naturally  close  and  severe,  and 
Stubbs's  shorter  writings  give  him  freer  play.  Amongst  them 
may  be  named  his  mass  of  statutory  lectures,  such  as  those 
On  Mediceval  and  Modern  History,  and  those  On  European 
History,  as  well  as  his  summary  book  on  The  Early  Plantagenets 
(1876).  At  Oxford  he  lectured  in  the  wilderness,  sometimes 
'  to  two  or  three  listless  men,'  but  exerted  great  influence 
nevertheless, and  bene volently  watched  the  progress  of  historical 
studies,  which  was  due  largely  to  his  own  teaching  and  example. 
He  afterwards  became  Bishop  of  Chester,  and  then  of  Oxford, 
continued  his  work  notwithstanding,  and  ended  full  of  honours. 
Part  of  Stubbs's  work  was  corrected  by  Maitland  and  others, 
but  much  of  his  edifice  is  acknowledged  to  stand  fast. 

In  his  private  convictions  Stubbs  was  not  only  orthodox 
but  vehemently  anti -liberal ;  as  an  historian,  he  is  the  shining 
example  of  a  judge  in  equity.  He  saw  that  no  period  is  so 
remote,  but  that  our  judgements  of  it  may  be  coloured  by  a 
prepossession  imported  from  a  later  day,  either  for  or  against  a 
person,  a  party,  and  nation,  or  a  creed  ;  and  such  a  preposses- 
sion in  his  eyes  is  the  sin  against  the  light.  Or,  more  dangerous 
still,  it  might  be  the  result  of  speculation  a  priori ;  and  accord- 
ingly Stubbs  has,  he  says, 

no  belief  in  what  is  called  the  philosophy  of  history *  ...  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  a  generalisation  is  founded  rather  on  ignorance  of 
the  points  in  which  the  particulars  differ  than  in  any  strong  grasp 
of  one  in  which  they  agree. 

In  this  spirit  he  works  ever  upwards,  in  Aristotelian  fashion, 
from  the  particulars,  washing  out  the  truth  from  their  infinite 
multitude,  like  a  master-digger  ;  and  reaching,  in  the  most 
wary  way,  generalisations  of  his  own.  In  judging  character  he 
is  the  embodiment  of  caution.  He  by  no  means  belongs  to 
the  school  which,  on  the  plea  of  being  scientific,  is  averse  to 


FREEMAN  159 

moral  judgements  ;  he  is  for  ever  passing  moral  judgements, 
often  in  very  strong  language  ;  but  they  are  the  fruit  of  in- 
tricate analysis,  with  every  item  weighed.  These  habits  of 
mind  are  seen  in  his  historical  portraits,1  which  are  packed  with 
thought  and  drawn  with  many  incisive  distinctions  ;  often 
each  detail  is  borne  out  by  the  authorities  in  a  footnote.  Such 
are  his  pages  on  Charles  the  Fifth,on  Henry  the  Fourth  of  France, 
on  Richard  the  First,  and  on  John  :  on  the  last  of  whom  is 
bestowed  an  epitaph  hard  to  match  for  its  severity.  These 
'  characters,'  often  embedded  in  a  stiff  learned  dissertation, 
are  artistically  among  the  best  of  Stubbs's  writings  ;  but  he 
can  also,  when  he  will,  tell  a  story  excellently  :  his  account  of 
the  last  days  of  Henry  the  Second  at  Chinon  is  an  instance  ;  and 
both  in  portraiture  and  narrative  his  close,  vivid,  stripped  style 
reminds  us  of  the  best  of  the  saga-men. 

Edward  Augustus  Freeman  2  (1823-92)  carried  on  the  torch 
of  Grote  and  Arnold,  by  virtue  not  only  of  his  devotion  to 
scientific  method,  but  of  his  firm  faith  in  the  study  of  history 
— especially  of  classical  history — as  a  school  of  affairs  and  a 
source  of  political  wisdom.  '  The  history  of  ancient  freedom  ' 
is  '  one  of  the  most  living  pursuits  for  the  ruler  and  the  citizen.' 
He  was,  moreover,  a  liberal  of  the  Gladstonian  type  ;  the 
oppression  of  the  Eastern  Christian  by  the  Turk,  the  struggle 
of  the  modern  Greeks  for  constitutional  government,  were  to 
Freeman  but  another  phase  of  the  eternal  strife,  and  were  to 
be  judged  by  the  same  canons  as  the  fight  against  the  '  tyrants  ' 
of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  History,  he  holds,  is  continuous,  not 
only  because  the  divisions  of  '  ancient,'  '  mediaeval,'  and 
'  modern  '  are  artificial  in  themselves,  but  because  the  truth 
of  great  political  principles  is  independent  of  time  and  place  ; 
those  principles,  in  the  most  civilised  communities,  being  to 
Freeman's  mind  democratic.  And  they  are  also,  at  root, 
ethical.  With  the  extra-moral,  or  non-moral,  view  of  history, 
he  is  in  sharp  conflict  ;  and  he  censures  Mommsen  for  judging 
the  deeds  of  Caesar  merely  by  the  event,  and  without  reference 
to  right  and  wrong.  At  the  same  time,  like  Stubbs,  he  keeps 
in  view  the  changing  moral  standard,  and  sees  the  unfairness 
of  simply  judging  the  actions  of  one  age  by  the  canons  only 
consciously  realised  in  a  later  one.  Like  Maine,  he  familiarised 
the  English  scholar  with  the  '  comparative  '  method  in  the 
study  of  institutions — the  method  which  detects  the  same 
principles  and  phenomena  in  diverse  ages  and  countries. 

Freeman,  though  little  under  the  spell  of  Oxford,  was  and 
remained  a  convinced  high  Anglican.     But  his  bent  and  in- 


160  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

terests  were  from  the  first  sharply  defined,  as  though  with  a 
knife.  He  cared  little  for  theology,  or  for  any  but  political 
philosophy,  or  for  any  art  except  architecture  ;  or  for  litera- 
ture, except  as  an  amusement.  But  he  had  a  passion  and  a 
genius  for  the  analysis  of  political  structure.  One  of  his  college 
essays  is  said  to  show  the  germinal  idea  of  the  Norman  Conquest. 
He  dreamed  of,  and  in  the  end  was  to  execute  in  part,  a  History 
of  Federal  Government,  ancient  and  modern.  The  completed 
portion  upon  Greece,  despite  its  mass  of  learning,  attracts  the 
lay  reader  by  its  clear  argument  and  vigour  of  style.  The  long 
history  of  Greece  he  saw  as  a  whole  ;  and  his  admiring  reviews 
of  Finlay's  great  work  explain  at  once  his  enthusiasm  for  the 
experiment  of  the  Achaean  League  and  his  ardent  desire  to  see 
the  last  of  the  Turk  in  Europe.  Freeman's  many-sided  interest 
in  classical  history  is  best  seen  in  the  essays  scattered  up  and 
down  his  four  series  of  Historical  Essays,  which  are  mostly 
reprinted  articles,  and  in  the  History  of  Sicily,  which  he  did  not 
finish.  It  is  not  the  interest  of  a  humanist  ;  we  hear  little  of 
the  religion,  or  thought,  or  art,  or  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
or  of  the  life  of  their  peoples  ;  and  this  remarkable  limitation 
must  be  remembered  ;  but,  in  recompense,  Freeman  concen- 
trated upon  their  polity,  and  on  their  struggles  for  constitu- 
tional freedom,  and  for  national  or  imperial  unity.  '  To  read,' 
he  says,  '  the  political  part  of  Mr.  Grote's  History  is  an  epoch 
in  a  man's  life.'  '  We  profess  a  religion  of  Hebrew  birth  ;  but 
the  oracles  of  that  religion  speak  the  tongue  of  Greece,  and  they 
reach  us  only  through  the  agency  of  Rome.'  Rome,  indeed, 
was  the  spot  to  and  from  which  almost  all  roads  led  in  Free- 
man's eyes.  His  mind  and  style  are  seen  at  their  best  in  his 
large  surveys,  which  sweep  easily  down  the  ages,  and  radiate 
from  some  great  focus  of  civilisation  and  war,  be  it  Rome  or 
Athens,  Sicily  or  Constantinople.  His  article  on  Sicily  in 
the  Britannica  is  a  good  instance  of  his  powers  ;  he  gains  greatly 
by  enforced  compression. 

His  industry  was  intense,  and  his  work  voluminous  beyond 
belief.  He  wrote  over  seven  hundred  articles  for  the  Saturday 
Review,  and  countless  more  in  quarterlies  and  monthlies.  In 
1865  he  set  to  work  on  his  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest, 
which  appeared  (1867-79)  in  six  volumes.  Apart  from  the 
learned  labours,  which  he  duly  acknowledges,  of  Kemble  and 
Sir  Francis  Palgrave,  he  had  a  clear  field.  The  work  is  one 
of  vast  erudition,  and  is  of  the  first  importance  to  historians  ; 
and  the  story  is  told  with  all  Freeman's  energy  ;  but  the 
diffuseness  and  minuteness  of  treatment,  and  a  certain  hammer- 


FREEMAN  161 

ing  monotony  in  the  style,  leave  much  of  it  outside  the  bounds 
of  literature.  The  subject  is  politics  and  war  ;  Freeman  was 
wise  in  neglecting  aspects  of  history  for  which  he  did  not  care. 
He  followed  with  two  volumes  on  The  Reign  of  William  Rufus. 

In  1884,  when  already  sixty,  Freeman  became  Regius  Pro- 
fessor at  Oxford,  a  place  which  he  found  a  Sahara  of  examina- 
tions, not  a  living  fountain  of  historical  studies.  His  force, 
however,  did  not  abate  ;  he  poured  forth  lectures,  articles, 
and  books,  of  which  the  most  important  are  The  Methods  of 
Historical  Study  and  the  History  of  Sicily.  His  earlier  Rede 
lecture  (1873)  on  the  unity  of  history,  is  a  classical  exposition 
of  his  favourite  doctrine  (originally  inspired  by  listening  to 
Dr.  Arnold),  on  which  he  discoursed  to  the  last.    > 

Freeman's  style  has  been  rather  too  much  abused.  It  cer- 
tainly resembles  some  hewing  or  pounding  instrument  rather 
than  an  artist's  pencil.  He  has  the  reiterating  and  recapitu- 
lating habit  of  the  lecturer,  and  deliberately  thrusts  the  same 
truth  many  times  down  the  hearer's  throat,  to  make  sure  of 
him.  Such  a  habit,  in  print,  defeats  itself.  It  is  possible  to 
be  lucid  beyond  endurance,  especially  if  we  have  a  persistent 
craze  for  '  Teutonic  '  English,  as  for  everything  else  Teutonic, 
and  if  we  are  aggrieved  to  find  how  many  Romance  words  we 
are  really  using,  and  how  insidiously  like  '  Saxon  '  words  they 
often  manage  to  look,  so  that  we  must  console  ourselves  by 
the  timely  recollection  that  '  we  may  make  sentence  after 
sentence  out  of  Teutonic  words  only,  we  cannot  make  a  single 
full  sentence  out  of  Romance  words  only.'  This  fancy  for  a 
'  native  '  vocabulary  was  not  prompted  by  mediaeval  or  artistic 
feeling,  as  it  was  with  Morris,  but  by  theory,  and  the  result 
is  disagreeable. 

Another  proclivity  of  Freeman's,  also  making  for  tedium, 
but  much  more  respectable,  is  what  may  be  called  his  nominal- 
ism. After  the  manner  of  Hobbes,  and  still  more  of  Sir  George 
Cornewall  Lewis,  he  is  for  ever  dissecting  and  defining  abstract 
terms — federal,  democracy,  monarchy — in  order  to  see  what 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  them,  and  to  show  up  latent  fallacies  and 
ambiguities.  This  he  does  in  his  usual  copious  and  iterative 
manner.  The  effect  is  pedantic,  but  the  practice  is  a  healthy 
one,  and  makes  for  precision.  Freeman's  inveterate  harping 
on  verbal,  which  express  real,  distinctions  in  the  end  serves  his 
large  and,  as  he  likes  to  call  it  (using  a  term  which  is  not  'native '), 
his  '  oecumenical'  view  of  history. 

All  this,  as  well  as  his  exhaustless  facility  and  fertility  of  pro- 
duction, weighs  down  Freeman  as  a  writer  and  makes  it  the 
vol.  i.  L 


162  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

harder  to  read  him  for  pleasure.  Yet  he  is  a  relief  after  the 
decorative  and  high-flying  historians  ;  and  when  we  are  in  the 
mood  to  detest,  as  he  did  himself,  oratory  and  the  graces,  he  is 
refreshing.  And  he  is  not  only  always  informing,  but  he  always 
(except  in  some  of  his  churlish  invectives  against  Froude  and 
others)  writes  in  a  manly  way.  His  sheer  intellectual  grasp, 
his  big  vision,  get  into  his  language  ;  in  describing  signal  events 
and  characters,  Godwin  or  Edward  the  First,  or  in  summing  up 
the  service  of  Athens  to  the  world,  he  rises  to  a  plain  strong 
eloquence  and  to  grandeur  of  outlook. 

Macaulay  had  shown  how  scenery,  colour,  and  portraiture 
could  quicken  political  and  constitutional  history,  with  the 
life  of  the  people  as  a  background.  Every  one  had  to  read  the 
History  of  England.  But  then  he  had  not  written  the  whole 
history  of  England  ;  he  had  not  covered  a  century  of  it.  Nor 
had  any  one  worth  naming, since  Hume,  written  or  even  sketched 
it  in  a  vivid  and  competent  way.  The  new  science  did  not 
favour  such  adventures  ;  and  Freeman,  Gardiner,  and  the  rest 
devoted  themselves  to  single  portions  or  aspects  of  the  story. 
There  was  room,  therefore,  for  a  swift  and  living  survey  of  the 
whole,  on  a  moderate  scale,  conceived  somewhat  in  the  spirit 
of  Macaulay;  a  survey  that  should  do  justice  to  the  great  scenes 
and  personages,  and  should  also,  without  becoming  too  abstract, 
keep  alive  the  sense  of  continuity  in  the  national  record.  Such 
was  the  aim  of  John  Richard  Green  (1837-83),  whose  Short 
History  of  the  English  People  appeared  in  1874,  and  was  thirstily 
received  and  read.  The  book  was  the  greatest  popular  triumph 
since  Macaulay 's,  and  it  also  holds  its  place  amongst  serious 
histories. 

Green  writes  under  the  influence  of  a  certain  revulsion  against 
the  predominance  attached  to  military,  diplomatic,  and  courtly 
affairs. 

I  have  devoted  more  space  to  Chaucer  than  to  Cressy,  to  Caxton 
than  the  petty  strife  of  Yorkist  and  Lancastrian,  to  the  Poor  Law 
of  Elizabeth  than  to  her  victory  at  Cadiz,  to  the  Methodist  Revival 
than  to  the  escape  of  the  Young  Pretender. 

In  this  sense  he  called  his  work  a  history  of  the  English  people  ; 
but  the  word  should  be  '  nation.'  He  sets  out  to  delineate  the 
'  constitutional,  intellectual,  and  social  advance  in  which  we 
read  the  history  of  the  nation  itself.'  He  gets  far  above  the 
'  people.'  He  dwells  on  the  conceptions  of  Bacon  and  Hobbes, 
on  the  school  of  Spenser,  on  Comus  and  Paradise  Lost.  His 
literary  judgements  are  often  excellent.     In  the  History  of  the 


J.  R.  GREEN  163 

English  People  (1877-80),  an  enlargement  with  corrections  of 
the  shorter  work,  he  says  of  Dryden  : 

Dryden  remained  a  poet.  .  .  .  But  he  was  a  poet  with  a  prosaic 
end  ;  his  aim  was  not  simply  to  express  beautiful  things  in  the  most 
beautiful  way,  but  to  invest  rational  things  with  such  an  amount  of 
poetic  expression  as  may  make  them  at  once  rational  and  poetic,  to  use 
poetry  as  an  exquisite  form  for  argument,  rhetoric,  persuasion,  to 
charm  indeed,  but  primarily  to  convince. 

Not  a  complete  account  of  Dryden,  but  his  genius  has  seldom 
been  better  described.  The  pages  on  Chaucer  and  Bunyan, 
which  bring  us  nearer  to  the  common  folk,  are  just  as  good. 
It  is  in  his  handling  of  thought  and  letters,  and  in  the  kind  of 
emphasis  that  he  gives  to  them, that  Green  differs  from  Macaulay. 
They  now  become  part  of  the  story  in  their  own  right  ;  they 
are  not  merely  telling  illustrations  of  '  history,'  brought  in 
from  some  region  outside  it ;  they  are  history.  Thought,  of 
course,  like  literature,  has  also  an  internal  history  of  its  own, 
but  that  is  not  Green's  business.  He  applies  the  same  principle 
to  Wyclif,  to  Laud,  and  to  Puritanism.  He  does  not  reach  the 
Tractarians,  for  his  book  ends  with  Waterloo,  a  mere  '  epilogue  ' 
being  appended.  The  Making  of  England  and  The  Conquest  of 
England  expand  particular  chapters  of  the  story,  and  show 
similar  gifts. 

The  value  of  this  generous  conception  of  the  subject  does 
not  wholly  rest  on  Green's  actual  performance,  which  is  unequal 
enough,  but  in  the  difficulty  of  ever  going  back  on  it  once  it  has 
been  so  strikingly  executed.  He  was  charged  with  an  imagi- 
native use  of  authorities,  and  with  errors  of  detail  ;  but  the 
severe  historians  gave  him  their  blessing,  especially  the  accurate 
Stubbs,  who  spoke  of  Green's  '  deep  research  and  sustained 
industry  '  : 

There  was  no  department  of  our  national  records  that  he  had  not 
studied,  and  I  think  I  may  say  mastered.  .  .  .  Like  other  people, 
he  made  mistakes  sometimes  ;  but  scarcely  ever  does  the  correction 
of  his  mistakes  affect  either  the  essence  of  the  picture  or  the  force  of 
the  argument. 

Green,  indeed,  is  more  open  to  attack  as  a  writer  than  as  an 
investigator.  His  page  is  often  crowded,  even  dull,  when  he  is 
dealing  with  wars  and  factions,  about  which  he  cares  little. 
Some  of  his  portraits,  like  those  of  Elizabeth  or  Burke,  are 
indistinct  and  laboured.  With  all  its  rich  variety,  there  is  a 
certain  scrambling  effect  about  the  Short  History  that  prevents 


1G4  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

it  from  being  a  classic.  The  style  is  simpler  and  more  even  in 
the  History  than  in  the  Short  History,  but  some  of  the  colour  has 
gone .  Green's  Stray  Studies  from  England  and  Italy  (1876),  and 
his  second  series  of  Stray  Studies,  many  of  them  reprinted  from 
t he •  Saturday  Review,  are  among  his  happiest  writings  ;  it  is 
surprising  how  much  work  and  style  he  put  into  these  casual 
and  '  middle  '  articles,  which  are  usually  ephemeral  things. 
Many  of  them  return  to  the  historic  life  of  the  city  and  muni- 
cipality— London,  or  Yarmouth,  or  Como — a  subject  which 
always  inspired  the  writer.  Others  are  reminiscent  of  his  life 
as  an  East -end  parson  ;  others  are  old  reviews,  still  with  vigour 
in  them.  Some,  again,  are  purely  human  and  not  learned  at 
all,  but  the  work  of  a  holiday  mood  which  flings  learning  off  ; 
such  are  Carnival  on  the  Cornice,  Buttercups  (a  delightful  study 
of  the  young  heart-free  schoolgirl),  and  Children  on  the  Sands. 
The  Oxford  Studies  are  of  a  more  professional  cast  ;  but  they 
have  Green's  animating  quality,  like  all  he  writes. 


VI 

'  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Gardiner J  found  the  story  of 
the  first  Stewarts  and  Cromwell  legend,  and  has  left  it  history,' 
wrote  York  Powell,  speaking  of  '  this  English  Polybios.'  '  The 
result  of  his  labours  was  to  make  the  period  he  treated  better 
known  and  better  understood  than  any  other  portion  of  English 
history  '  (C.  H.  Firth).  *  Another  scholar  declares  that  '  he  has 
left  us  the  most  exact  and  impartial  account  of  any  period 
in  the  history  of  our  race '  (G.  P.  Gooch).  Samuel  Rawson 
Gardiner  (1829-1902),  unlike  Freeman,  Froude,  and  Lecky, 
was  never  drawn  into  the  stream  of  contemporary  politics, 
but  kept  to  his  proper  work  like  a  Benedictine  ;  and  he  has 
noted  in  a  philosophic  spirit  the  relationship  between  the 
historian  and  the  statesman.  The  former  can  only  help  the 
latter  indirectly  ;  the  point  of  contact  between  the  two 
is  found  '  in  the  effort  to  reach  a  full  comprehension  of 
existing  facts  '  ;  but  the  historian  '  uses  his  imagination  ' 
to  trace  out  the  causes  of  those  facts,  the  statesman  in 
order  to  '  predict  the  result  of  changes  to  be  produced  '  in 
them. 

He,  therefore,  who  studies  the  society  of  the  past  will  be  of  the 
greater  service  to  the  society  of  the  present  in  proportion  as  he 
leaves  it  out  of  account.  If  the  exceptional  statesman  can  get  on 
without  much  help  from  the  historian,  the  historian  can  contribute 


GARDINER  165 

much  to  the  arousing  of  a  statesmanlike  temper  in  the  happily 
increasing  mass  of  educated  persons  without  whose  support  the 
statesman  is  powerless. 

Gardiner,  then,  up  to  a  point  follows  the  banner  of  Ranke, 
and  another  sentence  shows  by  whose  example  he  had  taken 
warning  : 

Certainly  the  politics  of  the  seventeenth  centur}7,  when  studied 
for  the  mere  sake  of  understanding  them,  assume  a  very  different 
appearance  from  that  winch  they  had  in  the  eyes  of  men  who,  like 
Macaulay  and  Forster,  regarded  them  through  the  medium  of  their 
own  political  struggles.  Eliot  and  Strafford  were  neither  Whigs 
nor  Tories,  Liberals  nor  Conservatives. 

And  he  adds  that  '  the  constant  or  unavowed  comparison  of ' 
the  past  with  the  present  is  'altogether  destructive  of  real 
historical  knowledge.' 

Gardiner's  forty  years  of  devotion  to  his  master-work  left 
him  time  for  valuable  labours  as  a  lecturer,  populariser  of 
history,  and  editor  ;  his  somewhat  sequestered  life  in  no  way 
weakened  his  discernment  of  human  or  political  motives  in  his 
dramatis  personal.  He  hardly  paints,  and  has  no  flashes  of 
genius,  but  he  analyses  down  to  the  last  fibre,  without  cynicism 
and  without  false  sentiment.  The  comparison  may  be  strange, 
but  Gardiner  is  a  kind  of  Browning  in  prose,  so  sharply  does  he 
realise  opposing  points  of  view,  and  the  tragic  deadlock  that 
results.  Like  Browning,  he  also  has  an  ideal  strain  that  reveals 
to  him  the  ultimate  harmony,  which  was  in  part  to  be  histori- 
cally realised  (though  the  struggle  still  persists)  between  the 
one-sided  principles  of  the  two  great  parties  at  strife.  It  is 
this  strain  that  carries  him  beyond  his  immediate  theme,  and 
makes  his  story  one  of  instruction  to  the  statesman  and  the 
citizen,  as  well  as  to  the  student  who  wishes  to  '  see  the  thing 
as  it  really  occurred.' 

Gardiner's  first  ten  volumes  came  out  in  instalments  and 
under  various  titles,  between  1863  and  1882:  together  they 
form  the  History  of  England  {1603-16^2).  Three  more  (1886- 
91)  describe  The  Great  Civil  War,  and  another  three  The  History 
of  the  Commonwealth  and  Protectorate  (1895-1901).  He  reached 
the  year  1656,  leaving  a  chapter  of  the  sequel  for  print  ;  the 
work  was  completed  under  the  title  of  The  Last  Years  of  the 
Protectorate,  by  Professor  Firth.  Cromwell's  Place  in  History, 
a  course  of  lectures  given  at  Oxford  in  1896,  is  an  excellent 
example  of  Gardiner's  style  when  he  is  freed  from  narrative, 
and  of  his  quality  as  a  philosophic  historian.     It  is  the  ripe 


166  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

fruit  of  a  lifetime  given  to  inquiry  and  to  thinking,  and  it 
contains,  not  a  picture,  but  a  subtle  and  many-sided  present- 
ment of  the  Protector 

as  he  really  was,  with  all  his  physical  and  moral  audacity,  with  all 
his  tenderness  and  spiritual  yearnings,  in  the  world  of  action  what 
Shakespeare  was  in  the  world  of  thought,  the  greatest  because  the 
most  typical  Englishman  of  all  time. 

Gardiner's  English  is  not  energetic  and  clumsy  like  Grote's ; 
but  it  has  been  justly  charged  with  some  flatness  or  bareness. 
He  cares  little  for  colour,  and  nothing  for  mounting  rhetoric  or 
cunning  elegance.  But  his  style  improves  on  acquaintance, 
and  as  his  work  progresses.  It  is  a  faithful  reflection  of  his 
mind  and  a  transparent  medium  for  his  story.  He  describes 
adventures  like  the  voyage  of  Raleigh  or  of  the  Mayflower,  or 
scenes  like  the  death  of  Charles,  with  effect.  He  can  also 
handle  unclean  matter,  such  as  the  divorce  of  Essex,  with  clean 
hands,  and  describes  a  court  scandal  without  moving  a  muscle. 
Indeed,  the  comedy  of  history  is  almost  absent  from  his  pages. 
His  manner  is  fitted  for  weighing  nice  probabilities,  for  the  clear 
and  convincing  exposition  of  obscure  motive,  and  for  the 
statement  of  condoning  or  aggravating  features  in  a  compli- 
cated case.  He  has  the  acuteness  of  survey,  and  the  decision 
united  with  simplicity  of  character,  which  are  sometimes  found 
in  judges. 

For  Gardiner  is  not  only  by  common  consent  a  great  scientific 
historian,  a  master-investigator  in  the  fields  of  foreign  policy, 
constitutional  history,  and  in  the  wide  borderland  lying  between 
theology  and  politics.  This  achievement  he  crowns  by  his 
power  to  realise  and  convey  the  ethical  atmosphere  of  another 
age.  We  go  to  him,  as  we  do  to  Lecky,  not  only  for  truth  of 
fact  but  for  truth  of  estimate.  The  severity,  even  naivete,  of 
his  own  moral  standard,  which  in  cast  is  markedly  Puritan,  or 
at  least  Protestant,  so  far  from  hindering,  actually  seems  to 
quicken  this  gift  of  trained  appreciation.  He  does  not  write 
under  the  influence  of  any  theory  that  the  historian  should 
cultivate  what  is  called  an  objective  or  detached  state  of  mind  ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  is  full  of  enthusiasm,  because  he  regards 
the  warfare  of  the  time  as  unconsciously  working  towards  a 
far-off  goal  of  toleration  x  and  freedom. 

At  last,  after  a  terrible  struggle,  teeming  alike  with  heroic  examples 
and  deeds  of  violence,  a  new  harmony  would  be  evolved  out  of  the 
ruins  of  the  old. 


GARDINER  167 

But  he  is  always  warning  the  reader  against  intellectual 
anachronisms,  and  pointing  how  much  and  how  little  enlighten- 
ment can  be  expected  at  a  given  moment  : 

Where  then  was  the  remedy  ?  It  is  easy  for  us  to  say  that  it 
was  to  be  found  in  liberty,  in  the  permission  to  each  new  thought 
to  develop  itself  as  best  it  might  ;  but  the  xevy  notion  of  religious 
liberty  was  as  yet  unheard  of  [1629],  and  even  if  it  had  been  as 
familiar  as  it  is  now,  its  bare  proclamation  would  have  been  of 
little  avail.  .  .  .  The  time  would  come  when  it  would  be  under- 
stood that  liberty  of  speech  and  action  is  all  that  either  a  majority 
or  a  minority  can  fairly  claim.  But  that  time  had  not  yet  arrived 
(vii.  39,  43). 

Even  the  intellectual  perception  of  the  value  of  toleration  had 
not  yet  dawned  upon  the  world.  The  obstacle  was,  however,  not 
purely  intellectual.  The  real  difficulty  was  to  know  who  was  to 
begin.  The  problem  as  it  presented  itself  to  men  of  that  genera- 
tion was  not  whether  they  were  to  tolerate  others,  but  whether 
they  were  to  give  to  others  the  opportunity  of  being  intolerant 
to  themselves.  Was  Laud  to  allow  Leigh  ton  to  gather  strength 
to  sweep  away  the  whole  Church  system  of  England  V  Was 
Winthrop  to  allow  the  dissidents  to  gather  strength  to  sweep 
away  the  whole  Church  system  of  New  England  V  It  is  only 
when  a  sentiment  of  mutual  forbearance  has  sprung  up  which 
renders  it  improbable  that  the  spread  of  any  given  opinion  will 
be  used  to  spread  other  opinions  by  force,  that  the  principle 
of  toleration  can  possibly  commend  itself  to  a  wise  people 
(vii.  158-9). 

Gardiner's  account  of  the  code  of  bribery,  and  of  its  refine- 
ments, in  the  age  of  Bacon,  is  one  good  example  of  this  passion 
for  accurate  perspective  ;  another  is  his  review  of  Laud's 
position  ('  a  lawyer  in  a  rochet,  and  that  not  a  lawyer  of  the 
highest  sort ') ;  or,  better  still,  his  tracing  of  the  changes  of 
attitude  towards  the  prerogative.  His  patient  analysis  of 
Charles  is  a  thousand  times  more  telling  than  Macaulay's 
invective,  and  in  the  end,  as  has  been  remarked,  he  has  no 
word  of  condemnation  for  the  regicide.  Gardiner's  glory,  then, 
apart  from  his  exhaustless  industry,  his  accuracy  and  equity, 
rests  on  his  possession  of  the  historic  sense  that  enables  him 
to  recover,  not  the  faces  indeed,  but  the  actual  minds,  of  '  our 
vanished  fathers,'  and  to  make  clear,  while  not  unduly  simplify- 
ing, the  determining  motives  of  men,  of  parties,  and  of  national 
movements. 


168  OTHER  HISTORIANS 


VII 


Sir  John  Robert  Seeley  1  (1834-95),  being  ako  a  divine  and  a 
critical  essayist,  stands  somewhat  apart  amongst  the  historians. 
He  was  a  brilliant  Cambridge  classic  ;  he  held  the  chair  of 
Latin  at  University  College,  London,  when  he  published, 
anonymously,  his  Ecce  Homo,2  A  Survey  of  the  Life  and  Work  of 
Jesus  (1866).  The  authorship  was  not  acknowledged  for  many 
years.  The  aim  of  the  book  is  to  treat  Jesus,  without  preju- 
dice, like  any  other  great  religious  reformer  :  to  pick  out  from 
the  gospel  texts  the  character  of  his  moral  teaching,  and  also 
of  his  supposed  theocratic  programme  ;  and  so  to  justify,  in 
the  light  of  each  other,  historic  Christianity  as  an  institution, 
and  the  thought  of  the  founder.  Other  questions  Seeley  does 
not  profess  to  ask  or  answer  :  whether  anything  like  the  doc- 
trine of  the  churches  was  in  the  mind  of  Jesus,  or  whether  Jesus 
held  a  true  view  of  his  own  origin.  But  the  supernatural, 
though  much  in  the  background,  is  by  no  means  denied  or 
ruled  out.  Jesus,  we  are  told,  did  work  miracles  ;  were  it  not 
so,  the  fabric  of  the  Christian  cult  would  be  shaken  ;  but  he 
displayed  much  '  temperance  in  the  use  of  supernatural  power  ' : 
a  sentence  which,  like  the  whole  essay,  failed  to  satisfy  thorough- 
going minds  of  either  extreme. 

Long  afterwards,  in  1882,  Seeley  produced  another  specu- 
lative work,  Natural  Religion,  this  time  under  his  name.  The 
book  was  less  popular  and  made  less  stir  than  Ecce  Homo,  but 
contains  intenser  thinking.  It  is  one  more  endeavour  to 
construct  a  working  faith,  mainly  on  naturalistic  lines.  But 
here  again  Seeley  is  seen  abiding  in  a  half-way  house.  In  his 
closing  pages  he  tells  us  that  the  supernatural  element  is  after 
all  to  be  retained,  but  as  a  kind  of  second  string.  Without  it 
we  might  fall  into  pessimism  ;  yet  we  must  not  have  too  much 
of  it  ;  it  must  not  '  come  in  to  upset  the  natural  and  turn  life 
upside  down  '  ;  still,  there  it  is.  The  main  purpose  of  the  book, 
however,  is  to  stretch  the  meaning  of  the  term  '  religion  '  and 
identify  it  with  all  the  higher  activities  of  the  human  spirit 
— civic,  ethical,  philosophical,  artistic,  and  scientific.  Even 
paganism,  even  pantheism,  must  be  laid  under  judicious  con- 
tribution. On  this  catholic  foundation  may  be  built  an  uni- 
versal church,  the  soul  of  the  state.  There  must  be  give  and 
take  on  all  hands,  but  doctrinal  theology  must  give  a  good  deal 
more  than  she  takes.  The  term  God  may,  or  must,  be  retained 
for  the  sake  of  its  associations.  Seeley,  in  framing  this  ideal, 
was  much  influenced  by  Goethe,  on  whom  he  wrote  a  luminous 


SEELEY  169 

essay,  Goethe  Reviewed  after  Sixty  Years  ;  and  also  by  Words- 
worth, whose  nature-worship  is  impressed  into  the  argument. 
For  an  historian,  Seeley  shows  little  sense  of  the  depth  of  the 
cleavages  in  human  opinion  which  must  be  mended  before 
his  dream  can  be  realised.  It  has  some  affinities  with  that  of 
Matthew  Arnold,  and  some  with  that  of  the  Comtists.  The 
ruling  conception  is  that  artists,  thinkers,  and  saints  and  simple 
souls  are  alike  banded  against  their  common  enemy,  who  in 
the  gospels  is  called  '  the  world.'  Seeley 's  temper  is  always 
lofty,  but  his  religious  books  lack  the  edge  and  clear  outline 
that  mark  his  historical  thinking.  As  a  critic  of  letters  he  is 
calm,  plain,  and  pointed,  in  the  best  French  academic  manner  : 
his  style  is  still  abstract,  without  much  colour  ;  and  his  two 
papers  on  Milton  are  a  good  example  of  his  methods. 

In  1869  he  became  Professor  of  Modern  History  at  Cam- 
bridge. A  keen,  thought -propagating  teacher,  he  now  found 
his  true  calling.  His  first  historical  work  on  a  large  scale, 
The  Life  and  Times  of  Stein  (1878),  relates  the  political  and 
mental  rebuilding  of  Germany.  Stein  is  the  chief  actor,  but 
Fichte,  Humboldt,  andNiebuhr,  each  of  whom  had  powerfully 
influenced  English  thought,  are  also  shown  in  clear  outline 
and  proportion.  The  English  public  now  had  a  trustworthy 
account  of  one  of  the  great  national  recoveries  of  modern 
times,  and  of  the  fateful  growth  of  Prussia.  Seeley  was  the 
first  to  digest  the  literature — since  his  day  hugety  augmented — 
of  the  subject,  and  the  worth  of  his  work  was  recognised  in 
Germany.  Yet  the  task  gave  little  scope  for  his  peculiar  gifts. 
It  is  a  minute  narrative,  and  its  wheels  drive  heavily.  Seeley, 
however,  excels  in  rejection  of  detail,  in  quick  and  lucid  review, 
in  reducing  a  complex  story  to  its  purest  elements,  and  in 
tracing  the  large  impelling  forces  of  political  history.  His  work 
stands  to  Carlyle's  somewhat  as  anatomy,  or  at  least  as  physi- 
ology, stands  to  portraiture.  Both  kinds  are  indispensable, 
though  Seeley  pours  unjust  scorn  on  the  theory  that  the  main 
affair  of  the  historian  is  to  present  a  picture  of  the  past  and 
the  shades  of  contemporary  opinion  ;  for  that  opinion,  he 
says,  in  judging  of  great  events  and  issues,  is  commonly  wrong. 
He  is  concerned  with  tracing  causation  ;  the  persistent  im- 
personal forces  which  may  indeed  work  through,  but  which 
eclipse  and  outlast,  the  energies  of  great  individuals.  To 
Carlyle,  who  is  concerned  with  scenes,  and  passages,  and 
'  heroes,'  history  illustrates  no  law  at  all  except  the  moral  or 
providential ;  Seeley  carries  his  opinion  to  an  extreme  in  his 
short  book  on  Napoleon,  whom  he  regards,  not  very  consistently, 


170  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

as  at  once  the  Ahriman  of  modern  history,  and  the  creature 
of  external  forces  But  when  he  comes  to  his  proper  task  his 
impersonal  standpoint  is  better  justified. 

The  Expansion  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  (1883) 
and  The  Growth  of  British  Policy  (1895)  are  part  of  the  same 
enterprise,  and  are  filled  with  the  same  spirit.  Seeley  thinks 
of  history  as  given  for  our  political  instruction,  and  of  present 
politics  as  history  for  the  guidance  of  the  future  statesman. 
The  truth  of  the  tenet  is  self-evident  ;  and  it  not  only  does 
not  .clash  with,  but  depends  for  its  force  upon,  the  doctrine  that 
the  historian  must  rid  himself  of  party  prepossessions,  avoid 
judging  past  in  the  light  of  present  standards,  and  see  '  the 
thing  as  it  really  took  place  '  ;  else  the  lessons  taught  by  history 
to  politics  will  be  tainted  at  their  source.  Seeley  himself  needed 
no  such  warning  ;  he  had  no  party  bias  ;  he  disliked  equally 
the  '  bombastic  school,'  which  exults  in  the  superior  morality 
and  governing  capacity  of  the  empire -founding  Briton,  and  the 
pessimist,  or  '  little  Englander,'  who  wishes  us  well  out  of  our 
dangerous  responsibilities .  Imperialism,  as  he  conceives  it, 
is  not,  as  with  Froude,  a  passionate  sentiment,  but  the  accept- 
ance of  a  long  inevitable  process  pregnant  with  endless  con- 
sequence. The  'expansion  of  England,'  he  says,  has  come 
almost  unawares  ;  historians  have  tended  to  treat  our  acquisi- 
tions (which  are  not  'conquests  ' )  in  the  East,  the  Pacific,  and 
the  New  World  as  mere  incidents  ;  whereas  they,  and  not  the 
wrangle  of  party  politics  and  the  fall  of  cabinets,  are  the  essence 
of  the  story.  Seeley  traces  the  expansion  of  Britain  first  in 
America  and  then  in  India.  The  process  was  utterly  different, 
even  opposite,  in  the  two  cases  ;  but  his  conclusion  in  both  is 
dead  against  disruption.  He  believes  in  drawing  tighter  the 
bond  with  the  colonies  and  dependencies  ;  and  he  thinks 
that,  at  least  for  a  long  while  yet,  the  abandonment  of  India 
would  be  '  the  most  inexcusable  of  all  conceivable  crimes.' 
The  Expansion  of  England  is  a  book  that  illustrates  its  own 
precept  ;  it  affected  opinion  powerfully,  and  through  opinion 
affairs  ;  it  is  a  piece  of  history  written  for  the  statesman. 

The  Growth  of  British  Policy  is  more  formal  in  cast,  and 
carries  the  review  much  further  back.  The  foreign  policy  of 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  is  shown  as  the  main 
formative  influence  in  our  history.  This  work,  which  was 
posthumously  published,  is  also  in  the  lecture  form.  The  needs 
of  the  lecture,  which  is  Seeley 's  natural  unit,  force  him  to  leave 
out  everything  inessential ;  he  does  not  exhaust  the  topic, 
and  still  less  the  pupil,  but  makes  him  think,  and  launches  him 


GOLDWIN  SMITH  171 

on  inquiries  of  his  own.  The  story  is  made  vivid  without  any 
of  the  usual  aids  ;  there  is  no  painting,  hardly  an  anecdote, 
little  analysis  of  character,  and  not  much  humour,  though 
plenty  of  sharp  pertinence.  Seeley's  elegant  and  concise 
language  is  never  obscure  or  oracular,  though  it  runs  to  epigram. 
To  generalise,  to  state  a  problem,  to  unravel  the  main  threads 
of  an  intricate  web,  it  is  admirably  fitted.  There  is  something 
Gallic  in  Seeley's  deft  manipulation  and  presentation  of  general 
ideas.  A  good  deal,  no  doubt,  is  sacrificed  which  more  im- 
aginative writers  provide  ;  but  as  an  expounder  of  English 
history  and  policy  from  the  oceanic  point  of  view  he  did 
memorable  work. 

Here  may  be  named,  though  he  is  not  properly  an  historian, 
that  accomplished  publicist,  journalist,  university  reformer,  and 
life-long  disputant,  Goldwin  Smith  (1823-1910).  His  brilliant 
and  restless  mind  had  many  facets.  He  began  as  a  prize 
classic,  and  worked  awhile  at  Virgil  with  Conington.  He  did 
far-reaching  service  on  the  Oxford  University  Commission  of 
1850.  For  eight  years  he  was  Regius  Professor  of  History  at 
Oxford  ;  and  though  he  had  not  been  drilled  in  investigation, 
and  added  little  to  historical  knowledge,  he  brought  the  breath 
of  contemporary  life  and  thought  into  his  discourses.  His 
Lectures  of  the  years  1859-61  are  a  singular  medley.  In  one 
he  pleads  for  the  basing  of  historical  on  humanistic  studies  ; 
in  others  he  attacks  scientific  determinism,  jeers  at  the  new 
conception  of  progress,  defends  the  providential  view  of  history, 
and  denounces  the  supposed  sceptical  consequences  of  Mansel's 
Bampton  lectures.  The  Positivist  '  calendar  of  great  men  ' 
and  the  speculations  of  Francis  Newman  are  also  castigated. 
Goldwin  Smith  certainly  could  manage,  and  loved  to  manage, 
the  whip.  He  was  also  capable  of  condensed,  effective,  and 
impassioned  rhetoric.  His  tone  is  rather  different  in  his  dis- 
course on  the  foundation  of  the  American  colonies,  and  comes 
nearer  to  that  of  the  historian.  Meantime  he  was  also  deep  in 
politics  ;  in  his  volume  of  collected  letters  to  the  press,  entitled 
The  Empire  (1863),  he  appears  as  an  old  liberal  of  the  purest 
stamp  and  undoubtedly  a  '  bonny  fighter,'  thirsty  for  the 
dust  that  he  raises.  His  collection  of  opinions  has  a  curious 
interest  to-day.  He  is  all  for  the  cession  of  the  Ionian  Islands, 
and  also  of  Gibraltar.  The  colonies  and  dependencies  he  would 
see  independent  realms.  To  India  we  are  at  present  committed 
— it  must  remain  British  in  a  sense  ;  yet,  in  the  long  run,  it 
should  be  no  longer  ruled  from  home,  but  by  an  absolute 
Governor-General — '  by  a  line  of  able  and  honourable  despots.' 


172  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

Goldwin  Smith's  language  and  tone  here  and  elsewhere  seem 
to  show  a  close  study  of  Burke  ;  there  is  the  same  attempt  at 
condensations  and  richness,  and  the  same  appeal  to  general 
principles.  The  result,  of  course,  has  not  the  same  perman- 
ence. Goldwin  Smith  wrote  profusely,  always  pointedly,  often 
eloquently,  but  mostly  on  the  sand. 

After  ceaseless  penwork  against  slavery,  against  the  South, 
against  Governor  Eyre,  and  against  university  conservatism, 
Goldwin  Smith,  while  in  mid -career,  broke  with  Oxford  and 
England,  resigned  his  chair,  and  migrated  to  Cornell  University. 
Here  he  flung  himself  into  the  work  of  organisation  and  teach- 
ing ;  he  also  found  himself  standing  up  for  the  old  country 
during  the  Alabama  quarrel.  In  the  last  phase,  after  1871,  he 
lived  in  Canada,  published  journals,  de  omnibus  rebus,  some- 
times wholly  written  by  his  own  hand,  argued  for  the  annexation 
of  Canada  to  the  United  States,  and  fired  off  pamphlets,  books, 
and  letters  upon  almost  every  public  question.  Two  of  his 
later  works  were  upon  the  political  history  of  the  United 
States.  He  was  anti -imperialist,  anti-clerical,  and  anti-home - 
ruler.  The  course  of  political  events  seldom  went  as  he  would, 
but  every  one  read  the  sallies  in  the  English  press  by  the  tireless 
old  Ishmaelite  in  Toronto.  Goldwin  Smith  had  his  own  refuge 
from  controversy.  His  style  softens  into  a  different  sort  of 
felicity  when  he  turns  to  pure  literature,  and  his  short  volumes 
on  Cowper  (1880)  and  on  Jane  Austen  (1892)  are  unexpectedly 
sympathetic,  as  well  as  skilfully  laid  out  and  written.  But  his 
great  natural  faculty  of  words  was  chiefly  spent  in  warfare. 

VIII 

I  have  only  professed  to  touch,  and  that  in  their  relation  to 
literature,  on  certain  leading  writers  ;  the  professional  chroni- 
clers of  historical  scholarship  during  the  period  have  many 
names  1  to  add  to  the  list.  And  it  is  needful  to  break  off  at  an 
arbitrary  date.  The  year  1880  has,  in  this  chapter,  no  special 
significance,  for  the  story  is  continuous  down  to  the  present 
day.  The  army  of  inquirers,  soundly  trained  in  modern 
method,  and  with  their  conscience  well  steeled  against  mere 
literature,  has  grown  steadily,  like  their  body  of  production  ; 
and  the  events  of  the  Great  War  alone  will  find  work  for  their 
own  and  the  next  generation.  I  will  but  mention  three  his- 
torians of  mark  who  prolonged  the  great  tradition  during  the 
last  quarter  of  the  century.  Some  of  them  had  passed  their 
noviceship  long  before.     Mandell  Creighton  (1843-1901),  latterly 


ACTON  173 

Bishop  of  London,  had  issued  several  shorter  volumes  before 
his  great  History  of  the  Papacy  began  to  appear  in  1882  ;    a 
work  of  acknowledged  authority  and  equity,  and  also  of  signal 
detachment  of  view.     The  noble  labours  of  Frederic  William 
Maitland  (1850-1906),  a  master  of  the  institutional  and  social 
history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  also  a  born  writer,  are  more 
recent  still.     The  unique  career  of  Lord  Acton  (1834-1902) 
opens  much  sooner.     In  the  early  sixties  he  is  seen,  a  young 
man  of  immense  information  and  courage,  striving,  in  journals 
like  the  Rambler  and  Home  and  Foreign  Review,  to  establish 
a  liberal  form  of  Roman  Catholicism,  founded  on  the  scientific 
and  faithful  study  of  history.     Acton  figures  much  in  the  corre- 
spondence of  Newman,  and  still  more  largely  in  the  Life  of 
Gladstone.      His  magazines  were  silenced  by  the  Ultramon- 
tane party,  but  he  was  again  in  the  fray  in  1870,  fighting  against 
the  decree  of  papal  infallibility,  which  seemed  to  strike  at  his 
dream  of  conciliating  the  spirit  of  science  and  liberty  with  the 
old  faith  ;    to  which,  nevertheless,  he  remained  firm.     In  the 
idea  of  freedom,  its  progressive  conception  and  realisation, 
Acton  came  to  find  the  key  to  the  purpose  of  history,  and  the 
safeguard  of  the  hopes  of  man.     The  work  of  his  life  was  to 
be  a  history  of  freedom  on  a  great  scale.     He  gathered  vast 
materials,  but  only  produced  massive  fragments  in  the  form  of 
lectures  and  articles.     Acton  was  said  to  know  more  than  any 
Englishman  of  his  time,  and  he  knew  too  much  to  accomplish 
his  task.     He  had  written  much  polemic,  and  also  many  his- 
torical studies,  during  twenty  years  ;    but  his  weightiest  body 
of  work  was  produced  after   1880.     As  the  founder  of  the 
English  Historical  Review,  as  the  successor  to  Seeley  in  the 
chair  of  Modern  History  at  Cambridge  (1895),  and  as  the  planner 
and  inspirer  of  the  Cambridge  Modern  History,  Acton  exerted 
a  profound  and  shaping  influence  upon  the  work  of  others. 
His  manner  in  speech  and  writing  was  finished  and  burnished 
to  the  point  of  artifice,  and  often  allusive  and  obscure  in  its 
conciseness.     It  is  the  English  of  a  man  who  thinks  in  several 
languages.     But  it  well  reflects  not  only  his  learning  and  his 
grasp,  but  also  the  grandeur  of  his  vision,  and  the  austerity  of 
his  moral  and  intellectual  habit.     He  carries  to  an  extreme 
the  high  ethical  view  of  history,  and  almost  refuses  to  the 
historian  the  right  of  allowing  for  the  moral  standards  of  another 
age  ;  a  refusal  which,  however  it  may  influence  Acton's  judge- 
ment of  values,  could  not  for  a  moment  alter  his  resolve  to 
win  the  truth  at  whatever  cost. 


174  OTHER  HISTORIANS 


IX 


This  chapter  may  conclude  with  a  note  on  two  writers  who 
saw  history  in  the  making.  '  Napier,'  observed  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  '  may  be  somewhat  Radical,  but,  by  God,  his 
history  is  the  only  one  which  tells  the  truth  as  to  the  events 
of  the  Peninsular  War.'  The  remark  was  handsome,  for 
Napier  speaks  freely  of  some  of  the  Duke's  miscalculations. 
But  the  Duke's  verdict  is  borne  out  in  substance  by  the  modern 
historians.  Napier's  hate  of  the  Spaniards,  his  enthusiasm  for 
Napoleon,  and  his  views  on  home  politics  may  call  to  be  dis- 
counted ;  but  his  real  topic  is  the  campaign  itself.  The  great 
work  of  Sir  William  Francis  Patrick  Napier x  (1785-1860)  began 
to  appear  in  1828  ;  the  last  volume  came  in  1840  ;  the  full  title 
is  History  of  the  War  in  the  Peninsula  and  in  the  South  of  France, 
from  the  Year  1807  to  the  Year  181 4-.  '  The  author,'  he  says, 
'  was  either  an  eye-witness  of  what  he  relates,  or  acquired  his 
knowledge  from  those  who  were.'  Napier  played  an  illustrious 
part  ;  he  was  at  Coruna,  Talavera,  Badajoz,  the  Nivelle,  and 
many  other  scenes  that  he  describes.  '  You  knew  what  you 
were  about,'  said  a  friend,  '  and  were  not  afraid  of  anything.' 
Napier  seems  to  have  gone  through  '  anything '  without  the 
thought  of  making  anything  into  literature.  After  coming 
home,  he  slowly  formed  the  plan  of  writing  a  commentary  on 
the  war  ;  but  this  grew  into  a  history.  His  primary  motive 
was  to  vindicate  his  hero  and  leader,  Sir  John  Moore.  He  first 
took  the  story  down  to  Coruna,  but  was  moved  by  its  reception 
to  go  on.  He  was  also  provoked  by  Southey's  History,  which 
he  describes  as  '  smooth  and  clear  in  style,  but  nerveless  as 
the  author's  mind  '  ;  also  it  was  prejudiced  on  the  wrong  side, 
on  the  Tory  side  ;  and  Napier,  unlike  many  soldiers,  had  strong 
popular  sympathies.  He  would  now  be  called  a  moderate 
Radical ;  he  was  a  delighted  reader  of  Cobbett.  He  was  also 
encouraged  by  the  unexpected  afflux  of  material.  The  Duke 
allowed  him  to  see  many  official  documents,  and  to  the  Duke 
the  work  is  dedicated.  He  received  important  information 
from  Soult,  of  whose  talent  he  makes  the  fullest  acknowledge- 
ment. The  History  was  greeted  with  abundant  criticism,  to 
which  Napier  replied,  cudgelling  back  with  a  will ;  but  its 
success  was  fairly  gained  :  it  became  a  classic,  and  it  was 
translated  into  many  languages. 

Napier  took  to  letters  late,  and  was  at  first  backward  with 
his  pen.  He  was  in  a  sense  self-taught.  As  a  boy  he  had  re- 
joiced in  the  same  romances  as  Don  Quixote,  and  their  breath 


NAPIER  175 

is  in  his  pages,  but  for  his  task  he  nad  gone  to  the  right  school, 
the  school  of  the  classics,  studying  Caesar  and  Thucydides  : 
and  some  of  their  qualities  he  really  had,  or  acquired.  The 
effects  of  the  Renaissance  are  eternal ;  Napier,  the  tried  warrior, 
writes  like  Montaigne  or  Machiavelli,  with  a  classic  example 
ever  on  his  lips,  and  finding  in  the  ancient  world  some  lesson 
of  chivalry  or  parallel  of  policy.  These  graces  and  decora- 
tions are  naif,  not  artificial,  and  they  grow  naturally  out  of  the 
heroic  theme  : 

Epaminondas,  mortally  wounded  at  Mantinea,  was  anxious  for 
the  recovery  of  his  shield.  Moore,  mortally  wounded  at  Coruna, 
sustained  additional  torture  rather  than  part  with  his  sword  !  The 
Theban  hero's  fall  dismayed  and  paralysed  his  victorious  troops. 
It  was  not  so  with  the  British  at  Coruna. 

In  the  same  way,  his  more  reflective  style,  the  excellence  of 
which  is  sometimes  overlooked  in  the  colour  and  energy  of  his 
descriptions,  is  often  packed  with  analysis  ;  the  scene  might 
be  Melos  or  Corcyra  : 

Former  failures  there  were  to  avenge  on  one  side,  and  on  both 
leaders  who  furnished  no  excuse  for  weakness  in  the  hour  of  trial ; 
the  possession  of  Badajoz  was  become  a  point  of  personal  honour 
with  the  soldiers  of  each  nation  ;  but  the  desire  for  glory  on  the 
British  part  was  dashed  with  a  hatred  of  the  citizens  from  an  old 
grudge,  and  recent  toil  and  hardship,  with  much  spilling  of  blood, 
had  made  many  incredibly  savage  :  for  these  things,  which  render 
the  noble-minded  averse  from  cruelty,  harden  the  vulgar  spirit. 

Napier,  by  acclamation,  is  held  to  possess  the  cardinal  gifts 
of  the  military  historian  :  science,  grasp  of  strategy  and  of 
intricate  operations,  insight  into  motive,  and  lucidity  in  ex- 
position. All  these  gifts  might  be  coldly  exhibited,  and  the 
result  speak  only  to  the  brain.  But  Napier's  language  burns 
with  the  flame  of  his  personal  memories  and  of  his  patriot  soul. 
He  keeps  his  head,  yet  he  writes  in  a  manly  passionate  style, 
not  without  sallies  and  exclamations,  but  without  the  con- 
sciousness and  studied  epigram  of  Kinglake,  another  great 
describer.  He  has  also  a  saving  streak  of  Plutarch  in  his 
composition.  The  brilliant,  endlessly  quoted  and  quotable 
pages  on  the  fight  of  Salamanca,  the  siege  of  Tarifa,  and  the 
retreat  from  Burgos,  show  his  mastery  both  of  subject  and  of 
form  ;  and  that  kind  of  work  forms  the  staple  of  his  narra- 
tive :  but  he  is  also  strong  in  heroic  episode.  His  History,  as 
he  remarked,  '  is  no  whining  affair.'  No  one  could  have  told 
better  the  story  of  the  scouting  officer,  Captain  Colquhoun 


176  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

Grant,  who  was  caught,  complimented,  and  betrayed  by 
Marmont ;  who  then,  escaping  to  Paris,  'frequented  the  coffee- 
houses, and  visited  the  theatres  boldly,'  and  who  finally  got 
off,  armed  with  the  certificate  of  a  discharged  American  sailor, 
to  the  British  fleet. 

Napier  worked  hard  for  twenty  years  after  finishing  his 
History.  He  gave  much  of  his  time  to  narrating  and  defending 
the  actions  of  his  brother,  Sir  Charles  Napier,  who  won  Scinde 
in  the  old  imperial  fashion.  The  histories  of  The  Conquest  of 
Scinde  (1845)  and  of  the  Administration  of  Scinde  (1851)  are 
vehement,  generous,  and  partisan  writing.  The  Life  and 
Opinions  of  General  Sir  C.  J.  Napier  (1857)  was  another  apologia 
in  the  same  spirit. 

It  is  natural  to  associate  with  Napier  the  name  of  another 
military  historian,  also  of  a  high  and  virile  temper,  namely 
Alexander  William  Kinglake  r  (1809-91),  the  chronicler  of  the 
Crimean  War.  Kinglake  was  not  a  soldier,  but  first  made  his 
name  as  a  traveller  and  observer.  His  ever-young  Eothen 
(1844),  with  its  engaging  arrogance,  its  heady  unabashed 
rhetoric,  and  its  light  wit,  records  his  wanderings  in  Servia, 
Turkey,  Palestine,  and  Egypt.  Fidelity  to  the  fleeting  mood, 
a  refusal  to  admire  in  ways  expected,  and  the  '  notion  of 
dwelling  precisely  upon  those  matters  which  happened  to 
interest  me,  and  upon  none  other  '  ;  that  is  Kinglake 's  pose,  or 
rather  it  is  a  good  resolution,  which  he  carries  through  without 
mercy  to  others  or  to  himself.  His  tempers  and  passing  lusts  of 
the  eye,  his  slight  shame  and  greater  relish  in  hustling  Orientals, 
his  amusing  inflated  raptures  in  presence  of  the  Sphinx  ('Mark 
this,  ye  breakers  of  images,'  etc.),  and  his  humorous  impressions 
of  Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  as  well  as  his  highly  edited  talks 
with  Pashas  and  officials,  are  a  mixture  of  light  comedy  and 
pleasant  rant.  Whether  he  writes  well  or  ill,  he  is  always 
himself,  and  little  debt  to  Beckford,  Hope,  or  other  forerunners 
can  be  detected.  It  does  Eothen  wrong  to  take  it  heavily,  but 
it  still  retains  its  savour. 

Kinglake 's  early  unsigned  reviews  in  the  Quarterly  2  have 
something  of  the  same  liveliness  ;  there  is  a  flippant  one  on  the 
'  rights  of  women '  (1844),  a  cause  with  which  the  voice  from 
the  East  ('Eothen')  does  not  sympathise;  and  another,  on 
Eliot  Warburton's  work,  The  Crescent  and  the  Cross,  is  a  mere 
excuse  for  a  tirade  on  '  the  French  lake,'  namely  the  Mediter- 
ranean, and  for  anti-Gallic  ebullitions. 

Kinglake  retained  his  vein  of  mingled  prejudice  and  chivalry, 
his  whimsicality  and  irony,  and  his  eye  for  colour  and  adventure. 


KINGLAKE  177 

These  graces  and  foibles  were  again  to  come  into  play,  and  his 
epical  skill  and  historical  judgement  were  to  be  tried,  in  a  sterner 
field.  He  saw  some  warfare  in  Algiers.  In  1854  he  found 
himself  in  the  Crimea,  still  an  unofficial  traveller,  but  the  guest 
of  Lord  Raglan,  whose  widow  afterwards  entrusted  to  Kinglake 
her  husband's  official  papers.  Kinglake  saw  the  Alma  and 
much  else,  and  stayed  on  till  the  beginning  of  the  siege  of 
Sebastopol.  He  went  home,  and  started  on  the  task  which 
occupied  him,  first  and  last,  for  a  whole  generation.  He 
developed  a  genius  for  digesting  a  vast  mass  of  evidence, 
printed,  manuscript,  and  oral,  into  a  clear  and  living  narrative. 
The  first  two  of  his  eight  volumes  appeared  in  1863,  the  last 
two  in  1887.  The  full  title  is  The  Invasion  of  the  Crimea,  its 
Origin,  and  an  Account  of  its  Progress  down  to  the  Death  of  Lord 
Raglan.  The  successive  volumes  roused  fierce  criticism  ;  and 
Kinglake's  political  opinions,  his  accounts  of  military  operations, 
his  unfairness  towards  persons  and  even  whole  nations,  as  well 
as  his  scale,  and  proportioning,  and  style,  were  all  viciously 
assailed.  The  opinions  of  experts  still  clash  over  his  book  ; 
there  appears  to  be  no  complete  and  authoritative  criticism 
upon  it  ;  and,  though  so  heavily  shelled  and  battered,  it  has  not 
yielded  its  position.  Some  of  its  obvious  faults  would  have 
sunk  a  writer  of  less  mark  and  energy. 

Kinglake's  accounts  of  policy  and  statecraft  are  warped  by 
preconceived  ideas.  Not  only  partisan  reviewers  but  historical 
students  have  condemned  his  obsession  against  Napoleon  the 
Third.  Much  of  his  work  in  this  department  is  little  more 
than  bitter  and  brilliant,  but  not  first-rate,  pamphleteering. 
Gladstone  remarked  that  the  book  was  too  bad  to  live  and  too 
good  to  die.  Kinglake's  pictures  of  his  heroes,  like  Lord 
Stratford  de  Redcliffe  and  Lord  Raglan,  do  the  heroes  no  good, 
being  often  in  a  strain  of  absurd  eulogy.  His  tribute  to  Todleben 
and  other  heroic  Russians  is  generous,  and  is  more  reasonably 
uttered.  Todleben  himself,  though  admiring  Kinglake,  called 
his  work,  so  we  are  told,  a  romance  rather  than  a  history. 
Kinglake  is  certainly  safer  as  a  painter  of  incident  than  as  a 
judge  of  character.  Apart,  however,  from  certain  obvious 
excesses  of  admiration  or  dislike,  he  is  even  painfully  anxious 
to  measure  out  military  glory  and  censure  justly.  He  worked 
very  hard  to  get  the  narrative  clear,  and  the  threads  distinct, 
and  the  details  accurate.  It  was  objected  that  eight  volumes 
were  excessive  for  recording  the  events  of  two  years  ;  but  it 
is  a  sufficient  answer  that  we  read  to  the  end.  It  was  not 
Napier's  method  ;  but  Kinglake  wished  to  show,  as  though  on 
vol.  I.  M 


178  OTHER  HISTORIANS 

a  cinematograph,  all  the  scenes  and  stages  of  a  confused,  bloody, 
and  momentous  affair.  And  he  leaves  a  wonderfully  clear 
impression  ;  the  march  of  the  drama  is  not  obscured  by  the 
pauses  which  he  makes  to  relate  individual  feats  of  heroism. 
Nor  is  a  whole  long  volume,  upon  such  a  plan,  too  long  for  such 
a  battle  as  Inkerman,  though  it  may  take  longer  to  read 
through  than  the  battle  took  to  happen. 

Kinglake's  style  was  much  copied  and  admired,  and  even 
more  widely  abused.  At  least  it  could  not  make  us  angry,  if 
it  did  not  keep  us  awake  ;  a  quality  for  which  we  must  have  a 
kindness,  seeing  how  soporifically  many  histories  are  written. 
Matthew  Arnold  called  it  Corinthian,  and  other  hard  names  ; 
and  though  his  own  tricks  are  not  much  better  than  Kinglake's, 
it  is  hard  to  deny  his  charges.  The  Quarterly  Review  hit  the 
worst  blot  when  it  said  that '  events  of  the  most  unequal  import- 
ance are  related  in  the  same  stilted  and  magniloquent  periods.' 
And  it  is  certainly  an  unsafe  style,  full  of  false  hot  colours,  and 
too  often  overcharged.  Rhetorical  devices,  such  as  the  use  of 
an  elaborate  icy  politeness  towards  uncongenial  persons,  are 
much  overdone.  And  perhaps  the  writing  is  too  visibly  filed 
to  the  last  point  of  acuity  ;  it  is  possible  to  be  too  highly  fin- 
ished and  polished.  Yet  somehow  these  vices  are  not  fatal. 
Kinglake  can  describe  with  the  clearest  precision,  whether  he 
is  treating  of  events  or  of  motives  ;  and  in  commemorating 
heroic  behaviour  he  can  even  be  simple.  The  life  always  runs 
high  in  his  pages,  and  sometimes  we  catch  the  emotion  of  the 
eye-witness,  as  in  his  account  of  the  stricken  men  whom  he  saw 
after  the  battle  of  the  Alma  : 

For  the  most  part,  the  wounded  men  lay  silent.  Now  and  then 
a  man  would  gently  ask  for  water,  or  would  seek  to  know  when 
it  was  likely  that  he  would  be  moved  and  cared  for  ;  but,  in  general, 
the  wounded  were  so  little  inclined  to  be  craving  after  help  or 
sympathy,  that  for  dignity  and  composure  they  were  almost  the 
equals  of  the  dead. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
CHURCH  AND  LETTERS 


The  Oxford,1  or  Tractarian,  or  Puseyite,  or  Anglo -Catholic, 
or  High  Church  movement,  and  the  Anglo -Roman  movement 
that  ensued  upon  it,  may  now  be  outlined  in  their  relation  to 
letters  ;  which  is  the  smallest  aspect,  no  doubt,  of  the  pheno- 
menon. A  fierce,  if  insular,  battle  raged,  and  is  not  yet 
extinguished  ;  the  frontiers  between  faith  and  reason,  the  canon 
of  doctrine,  the  connexion  of  church  and  crown,  the  seat  of 
clerical  discipline,  and  the  modes  of  ritual  and  observance,  were 
all  in  debate.  The  '  dead  ground  '  lying  between  philosoplry 
and  theology  was  strewn  with  relics  of  the  fray.  One  of  the 
results  was  a  body  of  writing  which  has  not  all  perished,  and 
without  which  our  view  of  the  Romantic  revival  is  incomplete. 
The  Oxford  authors  took  their  share  in  that  return  to  the  past , 
ancT  notably  to  the  Middle  Ages,  which  had  already  been 
quickened  in  art  and  poetry  and  fiction.  But  they  went  further 
than  the  poets  and  critics  ;  for  in  the  Middle  Ages  they  found 
not  only  a  treasury  of  stories  and  pictures,  and  food  for  the 
fancy,  but  a  school  of  dogma,  and  a  link  in  the  chain  of  revela- 
tion and  authority  descending  from  the  Apostles.  And  they 
went  back  further  still,  in  the  same  quest ;  they  went  to  the 
early  Church.  And  in  so  doing  they  disregarded  much  of  the 
mediaeval  mind,  even  in  the  field  of  religion.  Not  for  them, 
by  supposition,  are  Wyclif  and  Langland,  or  the  '  prelude  to  the 
Reformation  '  ;  the  mass  of  pious -amorous  poetry  is  foreign 
to  their  severe  temper,  and  so  are  the  founders  of  humanism, 
Petrarch  and  Boccaccio.  They  take  from  the  Middle  Ages  just 
what  they  want.  Traces,  however,  of  Dante,  may  perhaps  be 
found  in  The  Dream  of  Gerontius  ;  and  one  of  the  best  intro- 
ductions to  the  poet,  the  essay  by  Dean  Church  (1878),  is  a 
tardy  fruit  of  the  Anglican  revival. 

The  Tractarians  owe  a  little  to  the  poetry  of  the  preceding 
age.  The  author  of  The  Christian  Year,  and  the  still  gentler 
poets,  Frederick  Faber  and  Isaac  Williams,  have  Wordsworth 

17» 


180  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

behind  thein,  partly  as  a  watcher  of  nature,  and  still  more  as  a 
devotee  of  the  English  establishment.  Newman  studied  the 
pure  plain  prose  of  Southey.  Coleridge  had  tried,  in  his  own 
way,  to  reanimate  the  pattern  of  a  national  church,  with  its 
exalted  '  clerisy,'  and  its  old  doctrine  reinterpreted ;  and, 
despite  his  tendency  to  attenuate  doctrine  into  symbol,  Cole- 
ridge attracted  Newman.  Scott,  above  all,  had  awakened  the 
historical  imagination,  and  with  it  a  general,  genial  prejudice 
in  favour  of  the  past.  His  influence  is  seen  in  the  efforts  of 
Newman  and  Wiseman,  and  of  Kingsley  in  another  camp,  to 
apply  bis  method  to  the  moving  or  heroic  incidents  of  early 
Christian  times.  Callista  appeared  in  1856,  Fdbiola  in  1854, 
Hypatia  in  1853.  As  it  chances,  of  the  three,  the  '  broad 
churchman  '  shows  the  greatest  sympathy  and  power. 

A  eocond   literary  influence  was  that  of  our  seventeenth- 
century  divines.     The  Anglicans,  in  the  course  oi  tteimirgu- 
ment,  soon  came  on  these  monumental  writers,  beginning  with 
Hooker,  and  took  off  some  of  the  rust  that  had  gathered  upon 
them  during  the  'age  of  reason.'     Their  learning,  their  blocks 
of  solid  reasoning  were  willingly  appropriated  ;    and  Pusey,  in 
point  of  erudition,  could  be  claimed  as  one  of  the  true  breed. 
But  after  all  the  age  of  reason,  with  its  conception  of  modern 
prose,  has  come  between.     The  quaintness  and  cumbrousness  of 
the  old  writers  are  shunned,  in  favour  of  a  plainer,  more  trans- 
parent style.     Yet  the  new  Anglicans  are  narrower  than  the 
old.     They  have,  on  the  whole,  less  lay  culture  ;  they  are  less 
weighty  minds  ;   they  are  not  exactly,  like  Taylor  or  Chilling- 
worth,  to  be  honoured  as  preachers  of  toleration  ;  and  they  have 
left  less  good  literature  behind  them.    Where,  amongst  them, 
are  the  counterparts  of  the  liberal  Hales,  and  of  the  large- 
minded,  Aristotelian  Barrow  ?     The  best  writer  of  the  school 
is  a  man  of  problematical,  abnormal  mind,  of  the  strangest 
texture  ;  that,  precisely,  is  the  interest  of  Newman  ;  and  he  is 
great,  when  great  he  is,  just  because  he  is  not  representative. 
Newman  reminds  us,  at  his  best,  more  of  William  Law  than  of 
any  seventeenth-century  author;  he  has  the  same  severe  earnest- 
ness, and  the  same  turn  for  irony,  and  for  the  moral  dissection 
of  the  backslider  or  self -deceiver  ;    some  of  his  '  characters  ' 
might  have  come  out  of  the  Serious  Call.    Nor  must  we  forget 
that  he  also  schooled  himself  amongst  heretics.     His  notion 
of  the  '  sceptic  '  is  formed  largely  on  his  memories  of  Hume  and 
Gibbon  ;  the  full-blooded  unbeliever  of  his  own  day  he  seldom 
pictures,  save  in  general  and  dreadful  terms.     The  style  of 
Gibbon  he  knows  only  to  avoid,  save  now  and  then  in  his 


ANTI-ERASTIAN  181 

historical  sketches  ;  his  own  periodic,  flowing  sentence,  when 
it  comes,  has  a  different  drapery  altogether  ;  he  prefers,  especi- 
ally before  his  conversion,  to  be  short  and  simple.  He  read 
Addison,  and  their  affinities  are  manifest.  The  fatal  simplicity 
of  Hume  may  have  helped  to  temper  his  dialectical  weapon. 
We  know  that  he  liked  Johnson,  but  as  writers  they  are  nothing 
akin. 

All  this,  however,  comes  to  little,  and  the  literary  origins 
of  the  Tractarians  and  the  converts  remain  somewhat  elusive. 
As  for  their  salvage,  it  is  hard  to  refer  at  length  here  to  more 
than  one  of  them.  Yet  it  will  be  right  to  attend  awhile  to 
William  Ward,  to  James  Bowling  Mozley,  and  to  Dean  Church, 
if  only  to  see  Newman  in  truer  perspective  ;  he  comes  out, 
under  the  process,  as  more  of  a  writer  than  they,  but  less  of 
a  thinker.  A  history  of  doctrine  or  of  ecclesiastical  learning 
would  apportion  the  emphasis  very  differently. 

The  '  movements  '  produced,  first  and  last,  a  surprising  bulk 
of  ecclesiastical  journalism.  The  bibliography  would  fill  many 
of  these  pages.  Few  even  of  the  old  irritant  manifestoes — 
book  or  memoir  or  sermon — now  retain  their  sting.  A  chapter 
could  be  given  to  the  political,  anti-Erastian  side  of  the  cam- 
paign alone.  One  of  the  provocative  forces,  if  not  the  deeper 
ground,  of  the  Oxford  revival  was  the  protest  against  the 
temper  which  treated  the  Church  as  a  mere  branch  of  the  civil 
establishment.  The  Crown  appointed  the  sacred  officials,  and 
the  findings  of  a  lay  council  might  determine  what  was  sound 
belief.  The  contrary  view,  in  Gladstone's  language,  was  that 
the  Church,  an  imperium  in  imperio,  had  in  the  bishops  '  the 
ordained  hereditary  witnesses  of  the  truth,  conveying  it  to 
us  through  an  unbroken  series  from  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and 
his  Apostles.'  This  note  of  political  independence  is  heard 
again  and  again  in  Tracts  for  the  Times  (1833-41)  ;  it  had  been 
sounded  in  Keble's  sermon  on  National  Apostasy,  preached  on 
the  '  birthday  of  the  movement,'  July  14,  1833.  It  is  repeated 
in  the  Remains  (1838-9)  of  Richard  Hurrell  Froude,1  the  Rupert 
of  the  war,  who  died  young  in  1836.  Froude's  amusing  and 
fanatical  flings  at  the  heroes  of  the  Reformation  enraged  the 
*  Protestants,'  and  disconcerted  the  '  high  and  dry  '  upholders 
of  the  Establishment .  His  high  and  fierce  courage,  his  in- 
capacity for  compromise,  and  his  natural  affinity  with  the 
older  Church  goaded  the  more  hesitant  mind  of  Newman, 
who  always  kept  his  sharpest  arrows  for  the  Erastian.  This 
trait,  we  know,  has  persisted  in  the  High  Churchmen.  Glad- 
stone, in  his  volume  (1838)  on  The  State  in  its  Relations  with 


182  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

the  Church,  diverged  from  the  rest  in  a  fashion  that  is  not 
unjustly  described  in  Macaulay's  essay  ;  but  the  book  only 
lives  as  the  occasion  of  that  typically  Whig  retort. 

Another  mass  of  writing  was  produced  by  the  Anglo -Roman 
controversies  of  the  period.  But  the  Ideal  Church  of  William 
George  Ward,  the  appeals  of  Wiseman,  and  the  harangues  of 
Manning  are  now  covered  with  dust.  Much  capable  writing 
lies  buried  in  the  religious  periodicals,  which  rose  greatly  in 
credit  during  the  half  century.  A  competent  map,  or  survey, 
is  much  to  be  wished  for  of  the  material  to  be  found  in  the 
British  Critic,  led  by  Newman  in  his  Anglican  days  ;  in  the 
Ultramontane  Dublin  Review,  as  conducted  by  Ward  ;  and 
in  the  Home  and  Foreign  Review  (the  successor  of  the  Rambler), 
the  capable  organ  (1862)  of  the  liberalising  Catholics,  led  by 
Sir  John  Acton.  Here  again  the  issues  are  political  as  much 
as  doctrinal ;  and,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  historical 
inquiry  on  the  one  part  and  philosophical  analysis  on  the  other 
were  notably  advanced.  But  these  enterprises  can  only  be 
named  in  passing.  For  literature,  the  central  figure  is  John 
Henry  Newman,1  who  was  born  in  London  in  1801,  became 
Fellow  of  Oriel  in  1822,  joined  the  Church  of  Rome  in  1845, 
was  made  Cardinal  in  1879,  and  lived  till  1890. 

II 

Apart  from  his  preaching,  Newman's  talent  for  words  flowered 
little  before  be  was  thirty.  In  1832-3  he  visited  the  Mediter- 
ranean, found  out  that  he  was  a  poet,  and  wrote  about  a  hundred 
brief  pieces,  including  The  Pillar  of  the  Cloud  ('Lead,  kindly 
Light ').  They  show  the  hidden,  the  ecstatic,  the  aspiring  side  of 
his  nature  ;  he  was  lonely  always,  and  cherished  his  loneliness 
jealously.  Somewhat  ruggedly  he  sings,  or  rather  speaks  in 
rhyme,  of  human  vanity  and  unrighteousness,  and  of  his  craving 
for  rare  and  lofty  consolations.  This  mood  may  have  been 
fed  from  the  first  by  his  Evangelical  upbringing  ;  and  certain 
traces  of  an  original  bleakness  long  appear  in  his  musings. 
Already,  however,  he  had  enlarged  his  mind  through  his  inter- 
course at  Oriel  with  the  clerical  '  intellectuals,'  headed  by 
Whately.  He  was  soon  to  break  with  them,  but  the  experience 
fostered  his  dream  of  a  large  ecclesiastical  communion. 

The  '  movement  of  1833,'  as  he  liked  to  call  it,  brought  out 
Newman's  turn  for  dispute  and  exposition.  The  next  twelve 
years,  ending  with  his  conversion,  really  inaugurate  his  prose. 
He   became   the   living   voice,  the   fighting  chieftain,  of  the 


TRACTS  FOR  THE  TIMES  183 

Tractarian  rebels.  His  works,  during  this  phase,  divide  into 
treatises,  tracts,  and  sermons.  The  tracts  went  on  till  1841, 
the  sermons  went  on  all  the  time.  Of  the  treatises  the  chief 
(besides  the  stiffly-written  work  on  the  Arians  of  the  Fourth 
Century,  and  the  Lectures  on  Justification)  is  the  Prophetical 
Office  of  the  Church  (1837),  which  was  long  afterwards,  in  his 
Roman  days,  reissued  with  destructive  notes  as  The  Via  Media 
of  the  Anglican  Church.  It  brings  to  a  point  the  main  conten- 
tions of  the  once -famous,  the  once -perturbing  Tracts  for  the 
Times,  which  must  now  be  strange  reading,  if  read  they  ever 
are,  for  many  of  the  Anglican  fold. 

Newman  wrote  about  one -third  of  the  ninety  tracts  ;  and 
their  literary  interest  comes  in,  and  goes  out,  it  must  be  said, 
with  Newman.  Not  that  he  is  always  easy  to  recognise,  for 
his  imagination  is  kept  down  ;  he  is  sharp,  precise,  and 
pugnacious,  and  he  courts  simplicity  and  astringency.  He 
draws  the  mouth  up  like  an  unripe  sloe.  His  fierceness  is 
genuine  enough,  but  it  is  also  politic.  The  opening  numbers 
are  '  written  as  a  man  might  give  notice  of  a  fire  or  inundation, 
to  startle  all  who  heard  him.'  '  Choose  your  side,'  he  cries  in 
No.  1  to  the  stagnant  clergy  who  are  slow  to  proclaim  '  our 
apostolical  descent.'  He  had  the  instincts  of  a  superlative 
pressman ;  the  same  faculty  is  felt  long  afterwards  in  the 
papers  called  The  Tarn  worth  Reading -Room,  and  in  his  riposte 
to  Kingsley.  Sometimes  the  cold  fierceness  is  dropped  ;  in 
No.  47  there  is  an  exhibition,  astonishing  enough,  of  pulpit  self- 
righteousness  :  '  When  we  say  that  God  has  done  more  for  us 
than  for  the  Presbyterians.  .  .  .'  Not  all  these  numbers  can 
be  certainly  fathered  upon  Newman,  but  he  has  been  credited 
with  them.  In  No.  73  the  writer  flies  out  at  '  rationalism,'  on 
which  he  was  not  very  well  informed  ;  in  No.  85,  on  Scripture 
and  the  Catholic  Creed,  the  basis  of  the  via  media  is  laid  with 
elaborate  skill.  In  No.  90,  which  raised  the  storm  and  was 
condemned,  and  which  Newman  wrote,  the  position  of  the 
English,  as  a  '  branch  'of  the  Catholic  Church,  is  defended  by 
a  special  reading  of  the  Articles,  which  seems  now  strained 
enough  to  the  lay  reader.  The  plea,  in  effect,  is  that  the 
Articles  only  condemn  certain  vulgar  perversions  of  Catholic 
doctrine,  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  itself  being  implied 
in  the  condemnation.  The  aim  of  No.  90  was  honestly  tactical  ; 
it  was  to  keep  within  the  Church  the  extreme  spirits  that  were 
ready  to  fly  Romewards^-  Newman's  honesty  in  all  this  need 
not  be  doubted,  any  more  than  his  generalship. 

The  Tracts  had  altered  their  complexion  in  the  course  of 


181  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

their  issue,  with  the  formal  accession  of  Pusey  to  the  cause. 
They  became  learned  and  solid  ;  some  of  them  are  books. 
Pusey  discoursed  on  fasting  or  on  baptism,  exhibiting  an 
immense  procession  of  Caroline  and  other  theologians.  With 
Newman  and  Keble,  he  also  edited  the  Library  of  the  Fathers,  in 
many  volumes  of  translation  ;  the  series  went  on,  and  outlived 
the  schism,  and  was  a  true  contribution  to  scholarship.  A 
number  of  saints'  lives,  extracts  from  divines,  and  the  like,  were 
also  annexed  to  the  Tracts.  There  were  other  contributors, 
including  Keble,  Hurrell  Froude,  and  also  Isaac  Williams,  whose 
articles  on  '  reserve  '  caused  superfluous  alarm.  Many  of  the 
numbers  are  miserably  feeble  ;  there  are  imaginary  dialogues 
of  clergymen  with  prize  boys  who  are  grounded  in  the  right 
arguments  against  the  Erastian.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  any- 
where a  more  bigoted  and  sawdusty  page  than  the  unidentified 
No.  36,  An  Account  of  the  Religious  Sects  as  at  present  Existing 
in  England.  It  is  a  relief  to  go  back  to  Newman,  in  his  true 
capacity  as  a  preacher,  a  dreamer,  and  a  shepherd. 

We  have  to  read  in  the  long-subsequent  Apologia  his  own 
story  of  the  inner  struggle  that  came  to  a  crisis  before  1845. 
The  vulgar  enemy,  the  alarmed  friend,  and  Rome  herself,  saw 
the  goal  to  which  Newman,  at  first  unawares,  was  making. 
But  none  of  them  saw  the  path  he  took  ;  nor  did  he  see  it  him- 
self till  late  in  the  day  ;  and  he  spent  his  time — with  a  sincerity 
of  feeling  that  is  more  seldom  questioned  now,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  his  mental  processes — in  fortifying  and  defending 
his  high  Anglican  halting-place,  and  in  warning  others  off  the 
country  that  lay  beyond  ;  warnings  which  he  had  later, 
penitentially,  to  retract.  The  chief  material  for  judging 
Newman's  history  during  these  years  is  to  be  found  in  the 
Prophetical  Office,  in  his  last  lecture  on  the  '  difficulties  of 
Anglicans,'  and  above  all  in  his  letters  ;  in  these  the  story  is 
given  from  point  to  point,  with  all  the  vacillations,  and  not  as 
it  is  rounded  off  afterwards  in  memory,  or  used  for  controversy. 

Ill 

Many  of  Newman's  sermons  are  doctrinal  arguments,  like 
his  treatises.  The  Anglican  series  'on  the  theory  of  religious 
belief  '  anticipates  his  essay  on  the  Development  of  Doctrine. 
They  contain  a  scornful  picture  of  a  '  theophilanthropist,'  who 
wants  happiness  and  makes  much  of  God's  kindness,  but  little 
of  sin  and  God's  justice.  Many  other  sermons  turn  on  the 
dividing -fine  between  faith  and  reason,  a  subject  which  rest- 


NEWMAN:    SERMONS  185 

lessly  exercised  Newman's  mind.  Nor  can  his  doctrine  be 
severed  from  his  moral  and  imaginative  preaching.  Emotion 
and  fancy  must  rest  upon  a  hard  rock  of  dogma  ;  and  so 
dogma  in  its  turn  becomes  charged  with  passion.  But  his  higher 
style  and  vision  are  less  often  found  in  his  controversial  pages. 
When  he  speaks  as  a  seer  and  artist,  it  is  unmeaning  to  argue 
or  contradict  him,  and  it  is  then  that  he  is  a  great  writer. 

'  Come,  long  sought  for,  tardily  found,  the  desire  of  the  eyes, 
the  joy  of  the  heart.  .  .  .' — '  At  length  the  white  throne  of  God,  at 
length  the  beatific  vision  !  ' — '  The  year  is  worn  out ;  spring,  summer, 
autumn,  each  in  turn,  have  brought  their  gifts  and  done  their 
utmost ;  but  they  are  over,  and  the  end  is  come.  All  is  past  and 
gone,  all  has  failed,  all  has  sated.  We  are  tired  of  the  past ;  we 
would  not  have  the  seasons  longer  ;  and  the  austere  weather  which 
succeeds,  though  ungrateful  to  the  body,  is  in  tone  with  our  feelings 
and  acceptable.' — '  Life  passes,  riches  fly  away,  popularity  is  fickle, 
senses  decay,  the  world  changes,  friends  die.  One  alone  is  constant ; 
One  alone  is  true  to  us  ;  One  alone  can  be  true  ;  One  alone  can  be 
all  things  to  us  ;   One  alone  can  supply  our  needs.  .  .  .' 

These  were  the  plangent  tones,  this  was  the  musical  voice, 
that  sank  into  Newman's  hearers.  The  reader  can  recover  in 
some  degree  the  effect  that  he  produced,  of  which  there  are 
many  descriptions.  The  unearthly  note  of  lyrical  prose  recurs 
at  all  times  in  his  life,  but  is  never  purer  than  in  these  Oxford 
sermons.  The  style  is  mostly  so  simple  that  the  speaker's 
idiosyncrasy  cannot  be  seized  through  any  analysis  of  the  form. 
But  we  can  begin  to  piece  together,  by  reference  to  his  letters 
and  other  works,  some  of  his  ruling  and  haunting  ideas.  He  is 
disheartened  by  the  changes  and  decay  of  visible  things,  and 
appalled  by  the  aspect  of  the  natural  man,  and  of  what  the' 
natural  man  has  made  of  the  world  and  of  history.  This  it  is 
that  drags  Newman  out  of  the  solitude,  which  he  shares  with 
his  Maker,  and  in  which  he  is  '  luminously  '  conscious  only  of 
those  two  presences.  The  world  is  a  veil,  '  beautiful,'  he  says 
in  a  letter,  but '  still  a  veil.'  But  one  thing  at  least  in  the  world 
is  real,  namely  evil.  '  If  there  be  a  God,'  he  says  later,  '  since 
there  is  a  God»,  the  human  race  is  implicated  in  some  terrible 
aboriginal  calamity.'  History  is  a  bad  dream,  hope  falls  to 
pieces,  without  that  if  and  that  since.  The  children  of  Adam, 
left  to  themselves,  simply  work  out  their  own  curse.  This  is  an 
orthodox  view  enough,  but  Newman  holds  it  in  a  literal  way 
and  with  a  living  intensity.  For  a  precisely  opposite  one,  we 
can  turn  to  the  representation,  in  the  prose  dreams  of  William 
Morris,  of  the  'children  of  Adam  '  as  he  sees  them  ;  the  kindly, 


186  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

beautiful  lovers,  craftsmen,  and  warriors  of  the  future,  not 
exempt  from  anger  and  failings,  but  living  in  brotherhood,  and 
unperturbed  by  fears,  as  they  are  unmoved  by  hopes,  of  the 
hereafter.  It  is  this  innate  mood  which  determines  the  note 
of  Newman  as  a  preacher  of  conduct .  His  religion  is  often  one 
of  gloom,  denunciation,  fear,  and  distrust  of  human  nature. 
In  the  rigours  of  his  school,  in  the  diaries  of  Hurrell  Froude  and 
the  youthful  Pattison,  there  is  the  same  note.  Some  of  Newman's 
sentences  are  nightmares  ;  the  restraint  of  the  form  conceals 
their  sinister  character.  It  is  the  same  temper  that  sharpens 
his  bent  for  moral  analysis — for  '  realising,'  as  he  says,  '  our 
more  recondite  feelings  happily  and  convincingly.'  He  does  not 
speak  much  against  crime  or  vice,  they  are  too  remote  from 
him  ;  but  he  is  a  skilled  surgeon,  a  ruthless  confessor,  when  he 
touches  on  the  struggles  of  the  waverer  or  the  Protean  tempta- 
tions of  the  '  world.'  He  deals  in  sarcasms  and  threats  of 
judgement.  And  his  expression  is  often  classical,  however 
little  his  ideas  and  temper  may  attract  us. 


IV 

An  Essay  on  the  Development1  of  Christian  Doctrine  (1845) 
was  written  while  Newman  was  '  on  his  deathbed  as  regards 
the  Anglican  Church,'  and  was  finished,  with  a  lyrical  warning 
to  the  reader  '  not  to  determine  that  to  be  the  truth  which  you 
wish  to  be  so,'  when  the  struggle  was  over.  In  order  to  be 
more  telling,  it  was  printed  without  revision  by  Rome.  The 
date  is  significant.  Hegel,  twenty  years  before,  had  expounded 
the  philosophy  of  history.  The  world,  in  his  view,  was  a  theatre 
on  which  the  human  spirit  and  the  divine  idea  slowly  unfolded 
themselves  through  an  incessant  clash  of  contradictions. 
Hegel  was  little  known  in  England,  and  to  Newman  was  appa- 
rently not  known  at  all.  It  was  also  the  hour  of  the  earlier 
Comtist  zealots,  the  importers  of  the  Philosophie  positive,  for 
whom  theology  was  only  a  primitive  stage,  doomed  to  obso- 
lescence, in  the  march  of  truth  ;  not  therefore  to  be  accounted 
the  queen  of  sciences  on  any  terms.  Newman  does  not  appear 
ever  to  allude  to  this  reprobate  theory,  and  his  general  apathy 
to  lay  thought  except  in  certain  restricted  forms  is  noticeable. 
But  he  was  all  the  more  original,  or  rather  independent,  in 
pleading  that  truth,  by  a  divine  inevitable  process,  is  purged 
and  developed  in  the  course  of  history.  Development  was  not 
yet  a  current  biological  notion  in  1845.  Religious  truth,  says 
Newman,  is  beaten  out  by  the  agelong  clash  of  heresy  with 


NEWMAN  ON  DEVELOPMENT  187 

authority  ;  in  the  original  revelation,  its  dogmas  are  only 
implicit,  but  they  are  drawn  out  more  and  more  fully,  and 
never  quite  finally,  in  successful  official  pronouncements,  which 
are  themselves  made  under  supernatural  guidance.  He  pro- 
pounds certain  tests  of  truth  ;  the  chief  of  which  are  the  con- 
tinuous identity,  the  adaptiveness,  the  assimilative  capacity, 
and  the  power  to  survive,  of  a  really  vital  doctrine,  as  distin- 
guished from  a  mere  '  corruption  '  however  long-lived.  These 
requirements  prove  to  be  satisfied  only  by  the  creed  of  Rome. 
The  argument  is  really  an  appeal  to  the  event.  But  apart 
from  this  application,  Newman  has  a  true  and  distinct  vision 
of  the  life  and  fortunes  of  an  idea  :  how  it  exists  at  first  only 
as  a  germ,  grows  under  the  stress  of  combat  with  other  ideas, 
meets  new  conditions  as  they  come,  and  is  tried  in  numberless 
arenas  ;  how  it  satisfies  fresh  needs  of  mankind  as  they  rise 
up  to  challenge  it  ;  until  at  last  it  is  crystallised  into  a  general 
formula, or  explicit  truth,  which  lay  within  it  from  the  beginning. 
Such  a  test  certainly  admits  of  being  applied  to  the  scientific 
concept  of  evolution,  or  to  the  idea  of  liberty,  of  which  Lord 
Acton  hoped  to  write  the  history.  Newman  applied  it  to 
dogma  ;  and  he  has  been  of  course  criticised  by  all  who  deny 
the  supernatural  inspiration  of  his  tribunal,  or  who  cannot 
swallow  the  view  that  the  full-blown  doctrines  of  the  churches 
are  '  implicit '  in  the  untechnical  language  of  the  gospels . 
The  study  of  comparative  religion,  which  .grew  up  after  his  day, 
has  widened  the  whole  issue  ;  but  his  book  is  notable  as  an 
early  essay  in  that  science.  He  wrote  it  not  simply  as  an 
historian  or  philosopher,  but  also  as  a  record  of  his  own  mental 
history,  and  as  an  appeal  to  others.  With  all  its  acumen,  its 
manner  is  stiff  and  embarrassed .  This  may  be  due  to  Newman's 
want  of  conversance  with  philosophical,  as  distinct  from  theo- 
logical, literature.  The  same  want  is  evident  later,  in  the 
Grammar  of  Assent,  but  there  the  style  has  become  flexible 
and  easy.  In  the  Essay,  as  in  the  Grammar,  we  feel  that  lie  is 
coining  his  terminology  as  he  goes  along.  The  Essay,  more- 
over, reflects  his  transitional  stage,  as  he  painfully  struggles 
with  his  own  mind  and  affections,  in  retreat  at  Littlomore. 


The  crisis  over,  Newman  undergoes  a  great  relief  and  un- 
bending of  the  spirit.  For  five  years  he  does  little  but  preach  ; 
and  also  he  writes  a  novel,  a  '  story  of  a  convert,'  Loss  and  Gain, 
a  string  of  dreary  conversations  touched  with  gleams  of  humour. 


188  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

Then,  in  1850,  he  lets  himself  go,  in  his  lectures  on  The  Diffi- 
culties of  Anglicans  :  a  piercing  call  to  his  old  friends,  some 
of  whom  were  hopefully,  others  doubtfully,  moving  in  his 
own  tracks,  while  others  were  always  to  stay  behind.  These 
discourses  are  affectionate  to  the  point  of  tears,  ironical  to  the 
point  of  mischief,  and  relentless  to  the  point  of  cruelty.  They 
show  Newman's  gift,  which  is  one  of  the  sources  of  his  power,  of 
getting  into  the  skin,  and  speaking  with  the  voice,  of  a  real 
or  supposed  objector,  who  in  this  instance  is  his  own,  his  not 
long  since  discarded,  self.  He  tries  to  shut  off  every  loophole 
from  the  wavering  Tractarian,  who  can  neither  change  the 
English  Church,  nor  yet  form  an  inner  church,  or  a  '  branch 
church,'  or  a  sect.  Rome  is  the  only  logical  goal  of  the  '  move- 
ment of  1833.'  Newman  thought  so  ;  and  the  rationalist 
may  think  so  too,  and  the  Protestant.  Still,  such  has  not  been 
the  historical  outcome  ;  the  High  Church,  within  the  English 
pale,  has  grown  and  persisted,  with  results  that  must  soon  be 
glanced  at,  in  the  field  of  letters,  learning,  and  theological 
thought  ;  it  is  not  only  an  affair  of  ritual  and  of  clerical  politics . 
Newman  lived  to  see,  if  not  to  recognise  all  this  ;  at  the  time, 
he  turns  and  rends  his  old  alma  mater,  and  weeps  over  her,  and 
makes  fun  of  her,  and  lashes  himself  and  her.  The  effect  is 
not  agreeable  even  to  a  detached  reader  ;  the  inclination,  for 
so  it  must  be  called,  to  scratch,  is  too  strong.  But  Newman 
always  had  a  streak  of  womanish  temper,  which,  to  apply  a 
phrase  of  his  own, '  much  resembles  a  nun's  anger,  being  a  sweet 
acid.' 

The  Lectures  on  the  Present  Position  of  Catholics  in  England 
are  a  retort  to  the  No-Popery  clamour  of  the  hour,  following 
on  the  proclamation  of  the  English  Catholic  sees .  The  addresses 
were  spoken  in  1851,  to  the  lay  brothers  of  the  Birmingham 
Oratory,  who  were  to  go  forth  and  stem  the  popular  illusions 
concerning  the  Roman  Church.  The  immediate  audience  was 
thus  a  domestic  one  ;  and  the  tone  is  often  that  of  savage, 
witty  parody,  running  even  into  farce.  We  can  imagine  the 
strange  angry  laughter  of  the  hearers.  The  picture  of  John 
Bull  seeing  red  and  running  amok  is  hardly  overdrawn,  though 
it  is  slightly  tainted  with  the  vulgarity  of  its  subject  ;  and  it 
is  marked  by  an  almost  hysterical  tone  of  contempt.  There 
is  wit  in  the  sketch  of  the  young  Protestant  Scripture  Reader, 
who  strays  in  to  Benedictions,  and  '  finds  four  priests,  a  young 
priest  with  a  wand,  and  a  whole  congregation,  worshipping  a 
gold  star  glittering  like  diamonds,  with  a  lamp  in  it.'  Newman, 
in  spite  of  his  appeals,  has  few  illusions  :  he  sees  that  however 


ROMAN  SERMONS  189 

tolerance  may  increase  among  the  educated,  and  conversions 
grow,  John  Bull  will  not  be  changed,  and  England  will  hardly 
be  saved.  The  passion  of  the  time  is  reflected  in  Newman's 
fierce  humour.  In  these  lectures  he  attacked  Achilli,  the  dis- 
reputable unfrocked  priest,  who  won  an  action  against  him 
for  libel.  In  later  editions  the  pages  on  Achilli  are  left  out ; 
they  show  how  Newman  might  have  been  a  power  at  the  bar  ; 
and  in  their  place  stands  the  legend,  a  perfectly  fair  and  just 
one,  de  Mis  quce  sequebantur  posterorum  judicium  sit.  The  book 
is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  that  Newman  wrote  ;  it  amounts 
to  the  portraiture  of  a  character — that  of  the  bloodshot  Pro- 
testant, whose  blindness  is  an  act  of  his  will,  and  who,  multiplied 
by  millions,  stands  for  an  undying  enemy.  This  person,  indeed, 
is  Newman's  bogey  ;  and  there  is  room  for  some  writer  of 
equal  power,  who  has  not  yet  arisen,  to  describe  Newman's 
notion  of  the  communions  of  Chalmers  and  Wesley.  How- 
ever, it  is  the  Evangelical  Churchman  that  chiefly  moves  his 
ire.  Alien  to  either  side  is  the  historical  view  that  the  various 
religious  societies  and  their  articles  arise  in  response  to  the 
needs  of  various  natures,  types,  and  races. 

The  Discourses  to  Mixed  Congregations,  a  gathering  of  New- 
man's earlier  sermons  as  a  convert,  faithfully  reflect  the  change 
in  his  chameleon  temper.  The  delicate  balance  of  tone  has 
gone,  the  reticent  though  impassioned  sobriety  has  broken 
down.  The  polemical  parts  are  less  restrained  than  before, 
and  Newman  is  harsher  to  the  Church  he  has  left  than  he  ever 
was  to  the  Church  whither  he  has  travelled.  The  note  of  re- 
vulsicnary  scorn  is  loud.  The  devotional  parts  are  also  of 
another  stamp  ;  there  is  both  loss  and  gain  to  notice.  The 
unction  is  of  a  new  kind,  the  rhetoric  is  more  Southern,  more 
Latin,  and  the  preacher  dwells  with  an  almost  florid  opulence 
on  the  poetry  of  dogma  and  symbol ;  the  series  of  sermons  on 
the  Virgin  is  an  example.  Newman  feels  that  he  has  reached 
his  true  home,  and  the  note,  which  we  miss  in  the  Anglican 
discourses,  of  delighting  to  believe  without  restraint,  is  con- 
tinually heard.  But  the  magical,  the  Platonic  touch,  with  its 
exquisite  propriety  and  nicety,  has  departed,  or  become  rarer. 
In  fact,  Newman  tries,  much  more  than  of  old,  to  excite  by  his 
oratory  ;  to  do  what  he  had  reproved  before,  in  his  sermons 
on  the  Danger  of  Accomplishments,  where  he  is  a  thorough 
Platonist  in  his  distrust  of  fiction,  poetry,  oratory,  and  singing, 
as  likely  to  '  excite  emotions  without  ensuring  correspondent 
practice,  and  so  destroy  the  connection  between  feeling  and 
acting.' 


190  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

VI 

Newman  never  shows  more  courage,  or  is  more  himself, 
than  when  he  has  to  find  his  own  chart  for  a  nice  and  dangerous 
course.  The  lectures  and  articles  that  are  gathered  up  under 
the  title  The  Idea  of  a  University  1  were  composed,  the  first  set 
in  1852,  the  others  in  the  years  1854-8,  when  he  was  Rector 
of  the  Catholic  University  of  Ireland,  which  was  planned  for 
the  higher  education  of  the  flock,  and  as  a  counterpoise  to 
Trinity  and  the  godless  colleges.  The  scheme  failed  after  a 
trial  ;  Newman's  hands  were  tied  by  the  hierarchy,  and  his 
conceptions  were  too  large  for  his  public  ;  he  resigned,  and 
went  back  sorrowful  to  the  genial  St.  Philip  Neri.  But  the 
discourses  retain  a  living  value  ;  he  left  behind  him  an  '  idea,' 
rigidly  limited  no  doubt  on  this  side  and  that,  yet  embodying 
some  of  the  finer  genius  and  remembered  essence  of  his  Oxford 
life  as  tutor,  college  reformer,  and  humourist.  He  now  uses 
the  word  liberal  as  one  of  praise  ;  it  no  longer  means,  as  it  had 
formerly  done,  anti-theological.  He  seeks  to  adjust  it  to  the 
ground-plan  of  a  university  in  which  Catholic  theology  shall 
of  course  be  present,  nay  paramount,  but  where  she  shall  rule 
with  a  wise  reserve,  and  '  steady  '  the  work  of  intellectual 
education.  The  omission  of  theology,  he  cries,  had  marred 
the  programme  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  undenominational  colleges. 
She  must  receive  due  homage  ;  but  she  must  leave  room  for 
science,  medicine,  and  letters  to  work  themselves  out  freely. 
Newman  proceeds  to  define  this  ideal  more  exactly. 

The  primary  aim  is  to  teach  the 

diffusion  and  extension  of  knowledge  rather  than  the  advancement. 
If  its  object  were  scientific  and  philosophical  discovery,  I  do  not 
see  why  a  University  should  have  students. 

The  increase  of  learning  he  naively  relegates  to  mere  academies  ; 
he  seems  to  have  no  notion  that  a  university  can  train  an  in- 
vestigator. It  soon  appears  that  the  aim  is  to  fit  the  student, 
in  point  of  information,  intelligence,  and  manners,  for  the 
world,  not  for  the  study  or  laboratory.  Of  course  it  is  the 
Catholic  student,  who  in  Ireland  had  so  long  been  starved  and 
handicapped.  Still,  the  dream  is  otherwise  the  old  Oxford  one 
of  the  man  of  '  general  education,'  and  it  is  a  dream  which  has 
found  some  warrant  in  the  spheres  of  English  public  life 
and  business.  The  programme  is  generous  accordingly.  The 
world  is  mixed,  and  to  face  it  we  must  know  it  ;  and  to  know 
it,  the  young  Catholic — Newman  speaks,  of  course,  only  of  men 


NEWMAN  :  IDEAL  UNIVERSITY  191 

— must  candidly  study  in  his  pupilage  the  facts  of  science,  and 
still  more  the  literature  of  the  natural  man.  It  is  fatal  to 
shut  him  off  from  '  Homer,  Ariosto,  Cervantes,  Shakespeare, 
because  the  old  Adam  smelt  rank  in  them.'  So  far  he  had  been 
turned  out,  as  we  should  say,  un vaccinated  into  the  germ- 
laden  world.  The  university  must  not  be  a  mere  seminary. 
Nay,  he  must  not  shirk  meeting  even  the  enemies  of  the  faith. 
English  literature  is  not,  and  is  never  likely  to  be,  distinctively 
Catholic.  Newman  is  never  more  liberal  himself  than  when  he 
urges  this  programme  :  he  does  so  with  the  aim  of  preserving 
the  souls  of  the  faithful. 

We  may  feel  great  repugnance  to  Milton  or  Gibbon  as  men  ;  we 
may  most  seriously  protest  against  the  spirit  which  ever  lives,  and 
the  tendency  which  ever  operates,  in  every  page  of  their  writings  ; 
but  there  they  are,  an  integral  portion  of  English  Literature  ;  we 
cannot  extinguish  them  ;  we  cannot  deny  their  power  ;  we  cannot 
write  a  new  Milton  or  a  new  Gibbon  ;  we  cannot  expurgate  what 
needs  to  be  exorcised.  They  are  great  English  authors,  each 
breathing  hatred  to  the  Catholic  Church  in  his  own  way,  each  a 
proud  and  rebellious  creature  of  God,  each  gifted  with  incomparable 
gifts. 

It  is  a  most  characteristic  passage  ;  Newman  is  never  shaken 
in  his  seat,  but  he  always  feels  the  force  and  the  tug  of  the 
adversary.  Measure  him,  he  seems  to  say,  for  you  cannot  get 
rid  of  him,  he  will  always  be  there  ;  you  should  even  admire 
Milton,  very  much  as  you  do  Milton's  Satan.  We  can  hardly 
expect  Newman  to  concede  more  than  this  ;  and  his  curriculum, 
from  his  own  standpoint,  cannot  be  called  a  timid  one.  Else- 
where he  delineates  the  secular  side  of  his  Catholic  Athenian. 
The  language  may  seem  rather  general  and  didactic,  but  so 
was  that  of  Pericles  ;  and  there  is  something  in  it  which  is 
wholly  lacking  in  the  school  of  Brougham,  with  its  cry  for  the 
'  diffusion  of  knowledge,'  so  keenly  derided  by  Peacock  as 
well  as  by  Newman. 

A  University  training  is  the  great  ordinary  means  to  a  great  but 
ordinary  end  ;  it  aims  at  raising  the  intellectual  tone  of  society,  at 
cultivating  the  public  mind,  at  purifying  the  national  taste,  at 
supplying  true  principles  to  popular  enthusiasm  and  fixed  aims  to 
popular  aspiration,  at  giving  enlargement  and  sobriety  to  the  ideas 
of  the  age,  at  facilitating  the  exercise  of  political  power,  and  refining 
the  intercourse  of  private  life. 

The  well-known  character  of  the  '  gentleman,'  which  matches 
Ruskin's,  is  all  in  keeping  with  this  picture.     It  comes  in  the 


192  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

eighth  discourse  of  1852.  Newman,  though  he  had  never  been 
at  one  of  the  great  Protestant  schools,  perceives  that  with  all 
their  faults  they  do  form  character.  He  believes  in  a  large 
measure  of  '  self -education.'  Crabbe's  village  boy,  he  says, 
who  learns  his  own  poetry  and  philosophy  from  the  shepherd 
and  the  sea-gulls,  is  healthier  than  a  mere  thing  of  examina- 
tions. Still,  the  college  training  must  be  thorough  so  far  as 
it  is  carried  ;  and  Newman  has  judged  in  advance  another 
modern  vanity,  when  he  declares  that 

the  stimulating  system  may  easily  be  overdone,  and  does  not 
answer  on  the  long  run.  A  blaze  among  the  stubble,  and  then  all 
is  dark. 

There  are  many  things  that  these  discourses  do  not  contain. 
Newman's  liberalism,  no  doubt,  is  relative.  There  is  no  real 
sense  of  the  scientific  method  and  temper.  The  scholarship 
commended  is  of  the  delicate  but  narrow  '  English  '  descrip- 
tion. There  is  no  provision  for  revealing  what  Pattison  calls 
'the  grand  development  of  human  reason,  from  Aristotle 
down  to  Hegel.'  Yet  Pattison  *  himself,  the  escaped  Trac- 
tarian,  who  proclaimed  as  one  in  the  wilderness  the  ideal  of 
university  research,  testifies  to  the  '  breadth  and  boldness  '  of 
Newman's  exposition  ;  and  such  a  witness  is  not  to  be  despised . 
I  have  not  mentioned  the  haunting  and  musical  passages  on 
the  everlasting  moral  laws,  '  these  awful,  supernatural,  bright, 
majestic,  delicate  apparitions  '  ;  or  on  the  early  Irish  Church  ; 
we  may  remember  that  Newman  provided  for  the  '  special 
encouragement  of  Celtic  literature,'  engaged  Eugene  O'Curry 
to  teach  and  publish,  and  '  went  to  the  expense  of  having  a 
fount  of  Irish  type  cast  for  the  use  of  the  university.' 

VII 

But  his  hopes  in  Dublin  failed,  and  for  many  years  he  suffered 
from  despondency  and  frustration,  and  lay,  as  he  says,  '  under 
a  cloud  '  of  popular  suspicion.  He  wished  to  edit,  with  pro- 
legomena, a  translation  of  the  Bible,  but  was  baffled.  He  tried, 
impossibly,  to  mediate  between  the  Ultramontane  and  the 
Liberal  Catholic.  His  life  in  his  new  Church  was  a  record  of 
failure  ;  and  was  to  remain  so  until  in  his  old  age  he  received 
the  belated  tribute  of  the  cardinalate.  The  result,  meantime, 
was  isolation  ;  and  when,  in  1860,  being  now  fifty-eight,  he 
reads  a  new  poem  called  Tithonus  in  the  Cornhill,  he  feels  that 
he  too  is 


KINGSLEY  193 

fading  out  from  the  world,  and  having  nothing  to  do  with  its 
interests  or  its  affairs.  I  have  fallen  off  in  flesh  and  shrunk  up 
during  the  past  year,  and  am  like  a  grey  grasshopper  or  the  evapor- 
ating mist  of  the  morning.  And,  as  I  get  older,  so  do  trouble  and 
anxieties  seem  to  multiply. 

Apart  from  sermons  and  a  few  verses,  most  of  his  writing  thus 
far  had  been  exposition  or  polemic,  done  for  an  occasion,  and 
not  always  for  a  great  occasion.  It  had  little  unity  to  show, 
and  the  inner  clue  to  it  was  unknown.  It  might,  as  literature, 
have  receded  into  a  very  dim  region.  But  he  was  now  to  give 
a  clue,  and  to  write  a  real  book.  Late  in  1863  began  his  war 
with  Kingsley,1  who  foolishly  misquoted  him  and  taxed  both 
Newman  and  Rome  with  confessed  indifference  to  veracity. 
After  an  exchange  of  letters  and  pamphlets,  Newman  next 
year  produced  his  Apologia2  pro  Vita  Sua,  which  left  him 
cleared,  honoured,  and  triumphant. 

The  Apologia  came  out  in  serial  parts,  like  a  story,  and  must 
be  read  in  its  original  form,  with  the  controversial  portions 
adroitly  marshalled,  the  more  general  ones  coming  at  the 
outset,  and  the  particular  '  blots  '  in  Kingsley 's  argument  at 
the  end.  This  framework  was  shorn  away  in  the  next  edition 
(1865),  and  the  sub-title,  History  of  My  Religious  Opinions, 
became  the  title  ;  the  text  was  also  revised.  The  work,  in  its 
fulness,  is  a  confession,  a  document,  a  piece  of  English  history, 
and  a  work  of  art.  The  retorts  on  Kingsley  are  in  the  classic 
dialectical  manner,  the  manner  of  the  grand  siecle  ;  wonderful 
in  wording,  in  cadence ,  and  in  attitude .  The  anger  and  sarcasm 
are  in  part  forensic  ;  Newman  felt,  he  says,  that  he  must  say 
something  '  sharp  '  ;  but  they  are  genuine  too.  The  actual 
charges  hardly  required  a  master  of  fence  to  dispose  of  them. 
Kingsley  had  quoted  without  book,  and  his  apology  made 
matters  worse.  Newman  was  able  to  make  his  own  personal 
credit  the  issue,  and  not  the  historic  doctrines  of  the  casuists, 
Roman  or  Anglican,  about  mental  reservations  ;  a  point  which 
was  never  fairly  discussed  at  all.  It  is  odd  that  Kingsley  did 
not  see  his  own  weakness.  Any  British  committee,  in  such  a 
case,  insists  that  the  offender  shall  appear  in  a  perfectly  white 
sheet.  Had  he  gone  further  in  making  amends,  Newman 
might  well  have  lost  his  opportunity,  and  could  never  have 
written  his  formidable,  inimitable  letter  3  (February  13,  1875) 
after  Kingsley 's  death,  in  which  he  observes  : 

As  to  Mr.  Kingsley,  much  less  could  I  feel  any  resentment  against 
him  when  he  was  accidentally  the  instrument,  in  the  good  Providence 
of  God,  by  whom  I  had  an  opportunity  given  me,  which  otherwise 

VOL.   I.  N 


194  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

I  should  not  have  had,  of  vindicating  my  character  and  conduct 
in  rny  Apologia.  I  heard,  too,  a  few  years  back  from  a  friend  that 
she  chanced  to  go  into  Chester  Cathedral  and  found  Mr.  K.  preach- 
ing about  me,  kindly,  though,  of  course,  with  criticisms  on  me. 
And  it  has  rejoiced  me  to  observe  lately  that  he  was  defending  the 
Athanasian  Creed,  and,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  in  his  views  generally 
nearing  the  Catholic  view  of  things.  I  have  always  hoped  that  by 
good  luck  I  might  meet  him,  feeling  sure  that  there  would  be  no 
embarrassment  on  my  part,  and  I  said  Mass  for  his  soul  as  soon  as 
I  heard  of  his  death. 

Well  he  might  :  on  the  other  hand,  a  confused  good  faith  is 
equally  manifest  in  Kingsley,  who  blundered  into  the  man- 
trap through  what  one  of  his  critics  called  his  '  animal  scent  ' 
— his  scent  for  something  really  wrong  in  Newman,  that  was 
immaterial  to  the  case  before  the  court .  What  this  is,  Newman's 
whole  career  sufficiently  indicates. 

He  was  not  like  his  friend  Ward,  who  walked  straight  over 
the  worst  abysses  on  a  tight-rope  of  syllogisms.  He  never 
professed  to  move  by  processes  purely  intellectual.  The 
intellect,  he  says,  '  cannot  without  intrusion  exercise  itself  as 
an  independent  authority  in  the  field  of  morals  and  religion.' 
Arguments  he  has  in  plenty,  and  he  shows  the  gifts  of  a  consider- 
able schoolman  in  presenting  them.  But  avowedly  they  only 
count  amongst  his  mental  impulses.  Everything  shows  the 
subordinate  part  played  by  reason  in  the  moulding  of  his 
convictions,  as  distinct  from  their  self -justification  afterwards. 
As  he  moves  Romewards-,  we  watch  the  slow,  painful  inter- 
rupted drift  of  the  man's  whole  nature.  Signs  and  omens, 
a  sudden  intuition,  a  phrase  like  securus  judical  orbis  ten  arum 
(which  haunted  him  after  he  had  read  Wiseman's  article  on 
the  Donatists  in  1839),  all  play  their  part.  It  is  a  frank  and 
moving  history,  although,  to  minds  otherwise  built,  it  is  some- 
times puerile  ;  but  he  does  not  care  for  that  ;  it  is  a  true  history. 
'  Du  moins  je  suis  autre  '  ;  he  seems,  like  Rousseau,  always  to 
be  saying  that.  As  we  listen,  in  his  letters,  to  his  cries  of  sad- 
ness and  irritation  and  pique,  to  his  words  of  dependence  and 
affection,  and  to  his  stiange  feminine  jests,  we  may  feel  that  we 
do  not  love  him,  or  much  like  him,  or  trust  his  thinking,  but 
that  we  credit  him  ;  and  this  is  what  he  wants.  The  Apologia 
has  been  attacked  for  inaccuracies,  but  few  records  of  a  long- 
past  crisis  could  stand  literal  scrutiny.  The  finding,  in  general, 
is  confirmed  by  his  correspondence.  Not  that  all  his  story  is 
plain,  for  Newman  is  as  hard  to  fathom  as  Fenelon  ;  but  then 
no  Sainte-Beuve  has  yet  appeared  to  chronicle  the  inner  life  of 


LATER  WORKS  195 

the  Oxonian  and  the  Roman  movements  in  England.  Newman's 
challenge,  Secretum  meum  mihi,  cannot  soon  be  met.  One 
point,  however,  is  plain  ;  his  real  indignation  is  against  a  more 
difficult  and  treacherous  adversary  than  Kingsley.  This  is 
British  public  opinion.  No  wonder  he  had  been  misread  and 
mistrusted.  John  Bull  frowned  angrily  and  suspiciously  on  a 
mental  pilgrimage  so  alien  to  his  own.  Newman  had  estranged 
his  former  public,  and  soon  became  unhappy — not  so  much 
doctrinally  as  politically — in  his  new  Church.  He  had  never 
had  a  chance  of  speaking  out.  When  he  did  so,  John  Bull  still 
neglected  the  refinements,  but  granted  that  Newman  must  be, 
in  his  unintelligible  way,  an  honest  man. 


vru 

The  Apologia  contains  some  of  Newman's  great,  moving, 
poetic  passages,  which  arise  so  easily  from  the  argument ;  and 
it  really  left  his  mind  in  the  '  region  higher  and  more  serene  ' 
of  which  he  speaks .  This  is  apparent  from  his  poem,  The  Dream 
of  Gerontius,  written  in  1865.  He  could  now  live  awhile  in 
his  true  life,  the  life  of  vision  and  imagination,  though  he  was 
doomed  to  mix  again,  and  that  immediately,  in  ecclesiastical 
broils.  We  find  him,  in  the  same  year,  anxiously  reviewing  and 
disparaging  Pusey's  Eirenicon  on  the  one  side,  and  Seeley's 
Ecce  Homo  on  the  other.  But  during  the  long  remainder  of  his 
days  he  published  little  :  only  one  work,  indeed,  of  note,  An 
Essay  in  Aid  of  a  Grammar  of  Assent  (1870).  He  was  also 
painfully  exercised  over  the  papal  definition  of  Infallibility,  in 
the  same  year  ;  not  as  to  the  doctrine,  but  as  to  the  timeliness 
and  fitness  of  defining  it.  He  accepted,  of  course,  the  definition 
once  it  was  decreed  ;  and  in  1875  wrote  his  Letter  to  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk  in  reply  to  Gladstone's  pounding  pamphlet  on 
Vaticanism.  He  occasionally  took  up  his  pen  again  ;  at  eighty- 
four  he  is  found  explaining,  in  reply  to  the  searching  attacks  of 
Dr.  Fairbairn,  his  peculiar  attitude  to  Reason,  and  disclaiming 
the  time-worn  charge  that  he  had  fled  to  Rome  for  fear  of  his 
own  scepticism . 

Veteran  pastors  at  Oxford,  thirty  years  ago,  were  still 
shaking  their  heads  over  that '  scepticism,'  and  quoting  Huxley's 
saying  that  a  '  primer  of  infidelity  '  could  be  made  up  from  the 
writings  of  the  Cardinal.  But  the  point  is  easy  to  misstate, 
and  cannot  be  duly  drawn  out  here.  There  is  abundance  of 
scepticism  in  Newman,  but  it  is  all  contingent  scepticism,  which 
never  comes  to  anything,  since  the  contingency  that  would 


196  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

make  it  real  cannot,  for  him,  ever  arise.  How  could  it,  when 
his  first  principle,  his  theistic  premise,  stands  on  the  footing  of 
an  intuition,  as  certain  as  his  own  existence  ?  Without  that 
eveiything  would  crumble  ;  but  then  his  assurance  is  unshake- 
able .  So  that  he  feels  safe  in  displaying  the  worst  consequences 
of  its  negation.  Thus  his  famed  picture  of  the  world,  as  it 
seems  to  the  natural  reason,  moving  '  as  though  from  unreason- 
ing elements,  not  towards  final  causes,'  is  a  contingent  one  ; 
he  does  not  think,  he  is  not  tempted  for  a  moment  really  to 
think,  that  the  world  is  like  that  at  all.  He  dwells,  with  sur- 
prising vividness,  on  his  vision  of  what  the  world,  without 
religion,  seems  to  be  and  would  be  ;  but  in  doing  so  he  thinks 
more  of  others,  of  the  waverer  and  stray  sheep,  than  of  himself  ; 
he  remains  inveterately  a  shepherd  and  winner  of  souls.  He 
sees  quite  sharply,  too,  how  and  why  others  may  misconstrue 
him,  and  he  writes  of  an  old  friend  : 

My  surmise  x  is,  that  he  thinks  me  a  profoundly  sceptical  thinker, 
who,  determined  on  not  building  on  an  abyss,  have  [has],  by  mere 
strength  of  will,  bridged  it  over,  and  built  upon  [it]  my  bridge — 
but  that  my  bridge,  like  Mahomet's  coffin,  is  self -suspended,  by  the 
action  of  the  will — but  I  may  be  putting  it  too  strong. 

This  misreading  was  no  doubt  encouraged  by  the  Grammar 
of  Assent,  which  cost  him  several  years  of  hard  work  and  is  his 
chief  formal  contribution  to  philosophy.  The  book  shows 
Newman's  power  of  tortuous  analysis  and  dialectic,  but  its 
chief  interest  is  autobiographical.  He  had  always  been  sure 
that  he  was  sure  ;  but  he  had  always  been  vexed,  more  for 
others  than  for  himself,  by  the  question  of  method.  How  could 
he  convince  others  of  their  right  to  such  assurance  ?  The 
Apologia  had  been  a  memoir,  not  a  demonstration.  To  make 
the  omission  good,  Newman  wrote  his  essay  on  the  psychology 
and  logic  of  belief .  He  asks  what  is  the  ground  of  certitude  and 
the  warrant  for  a  reasonable  assent.  He  makes  his  well-known 
distinction,  which  is  psychologically  a  good  one,  between 
'  notional  assent,'  a  mere  intellectual  affair,  and  '  real  assent,' 
where  the  conclusion  is  also  embraced  by  the  will  and  f eelings . 
He  nicely  graduates  all  shades  of  acceptance  from  the  faintest 
to  the  most  complete.  Then,  adapting  Butler,  he  applies  his 
theory  of  '  probability  '  to  show  that  real  assent  not  only  may, 
but  must,  accept  many  a  conclusion  in  advance  of  the  logical 
evidence.  Nay,  in  religious  inquiry  we  are  not  '  justified  '  in 
waiting  for  full  demonstration  ;  for  it  may  never  come,  and 
meantime  we  must  live  and  choose.    Accordingly,  Newman 


NEWMAN  AS  WRITER  197 

discovers  a  special  '  illative  faculty,'  which  allows  and  forces  us 
to  make  the  leap  in  question.  The  application,  of  course,  is  to 
matters  of  faith  ;  and  the  faith  in  question  is  Newman's  own. 
The  book  has  been  hammered  at  both  by  theologians  and  by  lay 
heretics  ;  and  we  are  certainly  left  wondering  whether  the 
illative  sense  remains  the  warrant  for  its  own  conclusions  being 
objectively  true,  and  whether  Newman  does  not  offer  us  a 
psychology  under  the  guise  of  logic.  His  fluctuating,  personal, 
and  subjective  attitude  is  ever  in  contrast  with  the  hard  fabric 
of  the  orthodox  Roman  philosophy.  But  he  does  his  work 
with  address  ;  he  is  trying  to  speak  both  to  the  trained  minds 
which  can  follow  his  subtleties,  and  to  the  unlettered,  who  are  to 
feel  that  they  may  safely  believe  without  any  such  capacity. 

The  theme  gives  many  chances  to  an  ironist  and  a  musician 
in  words.  The  poet  and  the  Virgilian  speak  in  the  contrast 
of  the  '  notional '  assent  given  by  the  schoolboy  with  the  real 
assent  given  by  the  mature  man  to  the  Greek  or  Latin  lines 
which  are  '  the  birth  of  some  chance  morning  or  evening  at  an 
Ionian  festival,  or  among  the  Sabine  hills.'  The  romantic 
rebel  against  the  march  of  intellect  speaks  in  the  satire  against 
Brougham,  Peel,  popular  cheap  instruction,  and  what  Thomas 
Love  Peacock  had  called  '  the  learned  friend  '  ('  the  Lord  deliver 
us  from  the  learned  friend  !  ').  Elsewhere  Newman  is  more 
melodious  ;  he  gets  poetry  out  of  the  Athanasian  Creed  ;  and 
when  he  takes  the  clauses  on  the  Trinity,  and  '  illustrates  the 
action  of  the  separate  articles  of  that  dogma  upon  the  imagina- 
tion,' as  they  are  enhanced  by  chant  and  ritual,  he  rises  to  his 
full  height,  and  it  becomes  easier  to  see  why  so  many  followed 
his  voice. 

IX 

In  reasoning,  his  style  is  by  no  means  so  good,  with  all  its 
show  of  rigour  ;  at  the  best  it  is  a  great  philosophical  style — 
manque.  How  loose  it  is  appears  at  once  if  it  be  confronted 
with  a  page  of  Bishop  Butler,  or  of  Bossuet's  book  on  the  Pro- 
testant churches,  or  even  of  the  Anglican  divine,  Mozley.  The 
clearness  and  candour  of  John  Stuart  Mill  help  us  to  see  any 
gaps  in  his  argument  ;  but  these  gaps,  with  Newman,  are 
covered  up  by  scholastic  over-niceties,  or  by  poetry  and  fancy. 
He  was  a  sophist,1  and  an  honest  one,  and  all  the  more  formid- 
able for  that .  There  was  no  Socrates  to  expose  him  to  himself, 
nor  could  Socrates  easily  have  done  so.  His  own  gift,  in  one 
respect,  is  Socratic.  It  is  to  spur  to  their  natural  destinations, 
whether  to  right  or  left,  the  minds  that  are  content  with  half- 


198  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

way  houses.  He  was  naturally  attacked,  on  all  sides,  by  those 
who  objected  thus  to  be  dislodged.  He  tries,  at  different  times, 
to  threaten  the  Protestant  with  liberalism,  and  the  liberal 
with  scepticism  ;  to  quicken  the  dry  Anglican,  to  draw  the 
quickened  Anglican  to  Rome,  and  to  warn  the  convert  against 
intellectual  reserves.  It  is  true  that  he  himself,  once  he  has 
'  gone  over,'  shows  a  relative  liberalism,  and  resists  the  extremist ; 
but  much  of  his  writing,  from  first  to  last,  is  determined,  as 
to  its  tone  and  theme,  by  the  propulsive  instinct.  His  crook 
is  pointed  like  a  goad,  and  he  uses  it  at  either  end,  as  may  serve 
his  turn.  And  he  propels  not  by  argument  alone,  but,  wherever 
that  fails,  and  whether  it  fails  or  not,  by  every  possible  assault 
that  he  can  think  of  on  the  conscience,  the  imagination,  and 
the  mystical  feeling  :  thus  repeating  for  others  his  own 
experience,  and  holding  out  the  '  light '  that  had  led  him  '  o'er 
moor  and  fen.'  In  this  effort  a  singular,  though  very  fitful, 
gift  of  writing  is  displayed. 

We  have  to  watch  and  wait  for  Newman  as  an  artist.  For 
an  artist  he  can  be  ;  but  what  long  and  sterile  tracts,  what 
belts  of  unwatered  thin  vegetation,  separate  the  solitary  peaks 
and  the  happy  valleys  !  In  his  histories,  his  disputes,  his 
apologies,  and  his  fiction,  how  much,  even  on  a  liberal  showing, 
is  ephemeral !  For  the  historians  of  theology  and  of  English 
opinion  his  works  are  a  necessary  document  ;  but  as  a  writer 
he  is  best  in  selections.  He  has  left  three  books  of  original 
stamp  ;  but  the  Essay  on  Development,  the  Grammar  of  Assent, 
and  even  the  Apologia  are  all  cumbered  with  mortal  matter. 
He  holds  out  best  through  a  short  composition,  a  lecture,  a 
sermon,  a  chapter,  or  a  harangue.  Even  here,  we  remember 
single  pages  and  short  solos  rather  than  the  whole.  Perhaps 
he  is  surest  in  his  letters,  and  in  his  easier,  familiar  speech  ; 
there,  he  is  as  natural  as  Ruskin  is  in  Prceterita,  and  his  variety 
is  surprising.  His  impatience,  his  affections  and  sudden  hard- 
nesses, his  melancholy  and  his  rarer  moods  of  buoyancy,  are 
expressed  without  hindrance  ;  the  style  calls  no  attention  to 
itself.  He  is  full  of  more  or  less  gentle  mischief.  There  is 
something  childlike,  or  womanish,  in  his  slang,  when  he  talks 
of  '  tease  '  and  '  fidget  '  and  '  jobation  '  ('  I  had  a  most  horrible 
jobation  from  Coleridge  ' — in  the  Achilli  trial).  Sometimes, 
as  in  the  Letter  to  Pusey,  there  is  the  true  pat  of  the  ecclesiastic's 
claw,  gently  drawing  blood  from  an  old-  friend  who  has  been 
'  rude .'  There  is  another  vein  in  the  letter  which  begins  : 
'  St .  Philip  of  Birmingham  presents  his  compliments  to  Our 
Lady  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.'     Newman  has  the  power 


TECHNIQUE  199 

in  a  high  degree,  as  his  biographer  says,  of  '  adapting  his  mind 
to  that  of  his  correspondent.'  How  to  write  at  need  to  a 
Cardinal- Archbishop,  very  sourly,  but  '  kissing  the  hem  of  the 
sacred  purple  '  ;  or  to  a  pious  feminine  doubter  of  moderate 
intelligence  ;  or  to  an  intimate  like  Ambrose  St.  John  (caris- 
sime  !) ;  or,  in  the  crushing  manner,  to  an  insolent  Monsignore, 
who  invites  us  to  Rome  to  speak  to  '  an  audience  of  Protestants 
more  educated  than  could  ever  be  the  case  in  England  '  ;  or 
for  our  own  eye,  in  our  private  notes  ; — Newman's  letters 
would  be  a  manual  of  such  instruction,  if  only  it  could  be 
followed. 

But  though  subtle  he  is  not  supple  ;  he  is  absurdly  unlike 
the  stock  notion  of  the  Italianate  cleric .  He  has  only  too  little 
of  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  ;  he  is  not  like  Manning.  There 
is  something  in  him  of  the  plain  indignant  Briton,  only  asking 
for  fair  play  and  the  rigour  of  the  game.  This  physiognomy 
is  not  merely  a  mask,  or  persona  ;  though  he  makes  the  most 
of  it  in  his  retorts  to  Kingsley,  or  in  his  protest  against  the 
popular  caricature  of  the  Roman  Catholic.  The  voice  often 
corresponds  ;  Newman's  English  can  be  the  pure,  central 
English  of  Goldsmith,  or  even  of  Swift.  He  cannot  be  imitated  ; 
he  is  the  least  mannered  writer  of  his  time.  All  the  others, 
except  perhaps  Thackeray  and  Froude,  can  be  and  have  been 
well  mimicked,  by  disciple  or  parodist. 

There  is  variety  in  his  technique.  His  clauses  are  generally 
short,  but  except  for  a  purpose  they  are  never  curt,  and  they 
are  linked  into  a  natural  harmony.  They  recall  Shairp's 
account  of  his  Oxford  preaching  : 

Each  separate  sentence,  or  at  least  each  short  paragraph,  was 
spoken  rapidly,  but  with  great  clearness  of  intonation  ;  and  then 
at  its  close  there  was  a  pause,  lasting  for  nearly  half  a  minute  ;  then 
another  rapidly  but  clearly  spoken  sentence,  followed  by  another 
pause.  It  took  some  time  to  get  over  this,  but,  that  once  done,  the 
wonderful  charm  began  to  dawn  on  you.  .  .  .  Subtlest  truths, 
which  it  would  have  taken  philosophers  pages  of  circumlocution 
and  big  words  to  state,  were  dropped  out  by  the  way  in  a  sentence 
or  two  of  the  most  transparent  Saxon. 

Such  is  the  staple  ;  but  as  time  goes  on  Newman  elaborates 
more  and  more,  chaining  his  sentences  tighter,  and  building 
them  up,  not  into  a  complex  Ciceronian  paragraph,  but  into 
a  series  of  parallel  members  similarly  framed,  which  come  out 
right  at  last  into  a  clinching  phrase  or  climax.  The  page  in 
the  Apologia,  on  the  aspect  of  a  world  without  a  God,  is  a  well- 


200  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

known  example  ;    and  here  is  another,  which  may  be  given 
without  any  comment  on  its  amazing  contents  : 

She  [the  Church]  holds  that,  unless  she  can,  in  her  own  way,  do 
good  to  souls,  it  is  no  use  her  doing  anything  ;  she  holds  that  it 
were  better  for  sun  and  moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  the  earth 
to  fail,  and  for  all  the  many  millions  who  are  upon  it  to  die  of 
starvation  in  extremest  agony,  so  far  as  temporal  affliction  goes, 
than  that  one  soul,  I  will  not  say  should  be  lost,  but  should  commit 
one  single  venial  sin,  should  tell  one  wilful  untruth,  though  it 
harmed  no  one,  or  steal  one  poor  farthing  without  excuse.  She 
considers  the  action  of  this  world  and  the  action  of  the  soul  simply 
incommensurate,  viewed  in  their  respective  spheres  ;  she  would 
rather  save  the  soul  of  one  single  wild  bandit  of  Calabria,  or  whining 
beggar  of  Palermo,  than  draw  a  hundred  miles  of  railroad  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Italy,  or  carry  out  a  sanitary  reform,  in 
its  fullest  details,  in  every  city  of  Sicily,  except  so  far  as  these  great 
national  works  tended  to  some  spiritual  good  beyond  them. 

In  the  form,  everything  here  is  well ;  the  diction,  the  move- 
ment, the  simple  artful  rise  and  fall,  the  valuing  of  the  vowels. 
Such  effects  are  commoner  in  Newman's  Roman  period  ;  yet 
they  do  not  represent  his  usual  cadence.  Principal  Shairp's 
description  could  be  illustrated  freely.  When  Newman  is 
speaking,  as  though  to  himself  aloud,  on  the  nature  of  music, 
or  the  consciousness  of  the  animals,  or  the  presence  of  the 
angels  on  the  earth,  or  on  the  fragility  of  life  and  hope,  or  the 
fall  of  the  year,  or  on  Virgil ;  then  indeed  the  new  capacities 
that  he  discovered  for  English  prose  are  undeniable  :  but  one 
example  out  of  many  must  serve  here  : 

We  have  had  enough  of  weariness,  and  dreariness,  and  listless - 
ness,  and  sorrow,  and  remorse.  We  have  had  enough  of  this 
troublesome  world.  We  have  had  enough  of  its  noise  and  din. 
Noise  is  its  best  music.  But  now  there  is  stillness  ;  and  it  is  a 
stillness  that  speaks.  We  know  how  strange  the  feeling  is  of  perfect 
silence  after  continued  sound.  Such  is  our  blessedness  now.  Calm 
and  serene  days  have  begun  ;  and  Christ  is  heard  in  them,  and 
His  still  small  voice,  because  the  world  speaks  not. 

The  distinction  of  such  passages,  and  the  purity  of  their 
utterance,  rests  at  last  upon  the  solitariness  of  temper  which 
is  Newman's  deepest  characteristic.  They  express  a  certain 
ecstasy  ;  the  soul  is  far  withdrawn  into  an  internal  fastness 
What  if  he  is  an  unwilling  solitary,  never  more  alone  than  when 
alone,  and  always  craving  for  the  human  intercourse  which 
never  fully  satisfies  him  when  it  actually  comes  ?  That  makes 
him  all  the  more  appealing,  perhaps  all  the  stranger  ;    but  it 


NEWMAN:    POEMS  201 

saves  him  from  the  touch  of  coldness  with  which  the  great 
solitaries  pay  for  their  prize.  His  inmost  communings,  no 
doubt,  are  most  fully  expressed  in  his  small  sheaf  of  verses, 
which  remain  to  be  noticed.  Here  can  best  be  felt,  what 
Burne -Jones  remarked  in  him,  Newman's  '  glorious  scorn  of 
everything  that  was  not  his  dream.' 


They  are  written  with  an  effort  which  is  foreign  to  his  prose. 
They  are  often  rough  ;  their  form  bears  marks  of  the  inner 
conflict  that  inspires  them.  The  moods  of  self-abasement,  or 
of  painful  self-examination,  are  strained  to  the  breaking-point  ; 
the  ascetic  note  of  the  early  days  of  the  movement,  of  Hurrell 
Froude's  diary,  is  audible,  in  spite  of  joyous  revulsions  and 
ecstatic  interludes.  These  remarks  apply  to  the  brief  lyrics, 
already  alluded  to  above,  which  Newman  made  while  on 
his  Mediterranean  voyage,  sometimes  two  or  more  in  a  single 
day.  There  is  little  decoration.  One  of  these  pieces,  'Lead, 
kindly  Light,'  owes  part  of  its  charm  to  an  unexplained  element ; 
questioned  long  afterwards,  Newman  could  not  quite  interpret 
its  meaning.  His  supernatural  touch  is  felt  more  than  once, 
as  in  the  lines  '  When  Heaven  sends  sorrow  '  ;  but  he  seems  to 
be  most  himself  in  his  choric  Agonistes-like  fragments  ;  or 
they  remind  us  of  Empedocles  on  Etna  : 

Thus  God  has  will'd 

That  man,  when  fully  skill'd, 

Still  gropes  in  twilight  dim ; 
Encompass'd  all  his  hours 
By  fearfullest  powers 

Inflexible  to  him. 

The  translations,  made  some  years  later  than  this,  from  the 
Roman  Breviary,  are  more  assured  in  their  form  ;  but  The 
Dream  of  Gerontius,  Newman's  only  long  poem — written,  we 
have  seen,  amid  and  just  after  the  stress  of  disputation — carries 
us  at  once  into  the  land  of  lonely  vision  where  his  true  life  is 
lived.  The  soul  dialogues  with  itself  first,  as  it  expects  to 
leave,  and  then  as  it  leaves,  the  body,  when  the  priestly  voice 
has  said  the  word  Subvenite.  Then  it  falls  '  over  the  dizzy  brink 
Of  some  sheer  infinite  descent,'  and  time  is  now  compressed 
or  abolished.  Angels,  somewhat  scholastically,  instruct  the 
soul  in  mysteries,  and  it  approaches  the  cleansing  pains  of 
purgatory.  This  part  of  the  Dream  marks  Newman's  highest 
reach  in  verse .    The  rest — the  ritual  of  prayer,  the  songs  of  the 


202  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

angels — if  less  remarkable,  is  well  in  keeping.  None  of  New- 
man's contemporaries  ventured  on  the  same  theme,  none  of  them 
had  at  once  the  skill  and  the  faith  to  make  such  a  picture  con- 
vincing. He  owes  little  enough  to  others  ;  but  his  form,  the 
dramatic  monologue,  is  close  to  that  favoured  by  Tennyson  and 
Browning.  It  is  not  clear  that  any  particular  model  has  served 
for  the  blank  verse,  in  which  the  best  of  the  Dream  is  written. 
It  is  hard  to  suppose  that  Newman  cared  for  Marlowe,  of  whom 
we  are  sometimes  reminded  :  Gerontius,  speeding  from  his 
guardian  angel  to  his  judge,  is  a  contrast  to  Faustus,  but  speaks 
in  similar  tones  : 

The  eager  spirit  has  darted  from  my  hold, 
And,  with  intemperate  energy  of  love, 
Flies  to  the  dear  feet  of  Emmanuel. 

And  there  is  the  same  ring  elsewhere  : 

Now  let  the  golden  prison  open  its  gates. 

XI 

The  quickening  of  sacred  verse  and  hymnody  by  the  High 
Church  movement  may  here  be  sketched.  Behind  lay  the 
peaceful  Christian  Year  (1827),  described  in  a  previous  volume  ; 
and  Keble  continued  the  same  strain  in  his  Lyra  Innocentium 
(1846)  and  other  works.  During  the  first  heat  of  the  fray,  in 
1836,  appeared  the  Lyra  Apostolica,  with  Newman  for  chief 
contributor.  The  poems  were  collected  from  the  British 
Magazine,  and  amongst  other  authors  were  Keble,  Hurrell 
Froude,  and  Isaac  Williams.  The  verses  by  Newman  reflect 
the  stern  interior  life  and  lonely  consolations  of  the  captain 
in  the  intervals  of  warfare.  Christina  Rossetti,  that  sure 
artist  in  sacred  verse,  wrote  later,  and  will  be  considered  in 
another  context.  The  temper  of  her  feelings  and  meditations 
is  High  Anglican,  but  she  kept  aloof  from  the  disputes.  Some 
lesser  poets  must  be  named.  In  Isaac  Williams  (1802-65),  who 
remained  in  the  Anglican  fold, there  is  undeniable  poetic  instinct, 
though  his  work  is  much  diluted.  The  Cathedral  (1838)  is  an 
effort  to  versify  in  their  symbolic  senses  and  associations  the 
inside  and  outside  of  a  cathedral  building,  point  by  point  ; 
The  Altar  (1849),  in  a  sonnet  form  which  is  used  easily  and  has 
some  of  the  Words worthian  virtues,  represents  the  incidents  of 
the  Passion.  The  devout  and  modest,  yet  independent  temper 
of  Williams  is  happily  reflected  in  his  autobiography.  A  more 
prominent  figure  was  Frederick  William  Faber  x  (1814-63),  who 


TRENCH:    NEALE  203 

followed  Newman  to  Rome,  became  head  of  the  Brompton 
Oratory,  edited  Lives  of  the  Saints,  wrote  profusely,  and  found 
much  acceptance  as  a  preacher.  Much  of  his  sacred  verse  has 
the  preacher's  unction  and  facility,  rather  than  any  distinct 
style.  But  he  wrote  Pilgrims  of  the  Night,  and  other  pieces 
too  that  have  deservedly  taken  root  in  the  hymnals.  He  too 
descends,  in  a  measure,  from  Wordsworth  ;  and  he  is  most 
truly  a  poet  in  his  secular  hours .  When  he  sings  of  the  Cherwell 
and  of  Oxford — '  City  of  wildest  sunsets  ' — and  of  the  '  main 
glories  of  that  winter  wood  ' — Ba'gley  Wood — he  stands  for  a 
moment  beside  the  author  of  Thyrsis  as  a  master  of  windy 
landscape  in  water-colour. 

The  High  Churchmen  did  well  for  letters  when  they  disclosed 
the  treasures  of  the  Latin  hymnody.  This  work  was  begun, 
for  the  public,  by  the  philologist,  Richard  Chenevix  Trench,1 
afterwards  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  in  his  volume,  Sacred  Latin 
Poetry,  chiefly  Lyrical  (1849),  which  is  a  small  garland  of  first- 
rate  examples,  introduced  with  much  historic  sense  and  sym- 
pathy. Trench  handles  well  the  vital  question  of  the  Latin 
metres  and  their  changes  ;  his  apologies  for  certain  '  tares  ' 
and  '  doctrinal  blemishes,'  which  he  excises  or  avoids,  seem 
timid  now,  and  are  needless  ;  but  his  aim  is  to  rescue  from 
the  monopoly  of  Rome  the  great  chants,  the  Dies  Irce,  or  the 
In  Exequiis  Defunctorum  of  Prudentius,  as  '  immortal  heritages 
of  the  Universal  Church.'  The  work  of  actual  translation  was 
taken  in  hand  by  John  Mason  Neale  (1818-66),2  a  very  learned 
ecclesiastical  scholar,  and  a  metrist  of  unwonted  skill  and 
resources,  who  was  also  versed  in  music.  He  faced  the  greatest 
of  the  mediseval  poets,  Bernard  of  Morlaix,  Adam  of  St.-Victor, 
and  many  more,  keeping  in  most  cases  near  the  original 
measures,  and  getting  over  with  no  little  skill  the  constant  risk 
of  turning  the  Latin  double  endings  into  a  heavier  equivalent. 
His  style,  if  most  unequal,  and  not  of  the  rarer  sort,  has  at  least 
the  indispensable  rush  and  ardour.  Try  to  put  into  similar 
English  rhythm  Nunc  mcesta  quiesce  querela,  or  Vexilla  prodeunt, 
without  slipping  into  a  false  gallop,  and  you  can  measure  the 
courage,  now  and  then  well  rewarded,  of  Mason  Neale.  In  one 
of  his  happiest  experiments  the  measure  is  his  own.  The 
tripartite  dactylic  hexameters  of  the  Rhythm  of  Bernard  of 
Morlaix  are  hardly  to  be  reproduced  in  English  without  the 
special  inspiration  which  carried  Bernard,  as  he  so  gratefully 
claims,  through  the  task.  But  the  three  familiar  hymns, 
'  Brief  life  is  here  our  portion,'  '  For  thee,  0  dear  dear  Country,' 
and  '  Jerusalem  the  golden,'  are  centos  picked  out  of  Neale 's 


204  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

renderings  from  the  Rhythm.  He  also  was  the  first  to  dress  in 
English  verse  the  cadenced  prose  of  the  Greek  sacred  odes  ; 
he  adapted  many  mediaeval  carols,  and  '  Good  King  Wenceslas  ' 
is  of  his  own  making  ;  but  his  hymns  and  carols  are  of  less 
interest  than  his  translations.  Best,  as  hymn  and  poem,  is 
'  The  strain  upraise  ' — the  great  Cantemus  cuncti,  or  '  Alleluiatic 
sequence,'  which  is  not  sung  in  churches,  so  Neale  laments,  to 
the  original  music. 

xn 

No  one  will  refuse  a  parting  salutation  to  the  shade  of  the 
Cardinal,  even  if  it  be  only  in  the  poet's  words,  '  Go  honoured 
hence,  go  home.'  The  winding  and  embarrassed  course  that 
he  was  driven  to  steer,  and  the  cries  that  his  perplexities  drew 
out  of  him,  produce  a  mixture  of  distrust  and  regard.  It  is 
something  of  a  relief  to  turn  to  the  disciple  who  outran  Newman, 
and  vexed  him,  and  loved  him  :  this  is  William  George  Ward  x 
(1812-82),  the  most  consecutive  and  extreme  reasoner  of  the 
Anglo-Roman  movement.  Newman's  charm,  poetry,  delicacy, 
are  gone  ;  and  in  recompense  there  is  a  purely  intellectual 
but  very  clear  perception  of  the  exact  issue.  Ward  was  a 
pure-blooded  disputant,  careless  of  history  and  literature, 
and  happiest  in  the  hot  corners  where  divinity  joins  in  the  melee 
with  philosophy.  He  had  heard  Newman  in  St.  Mary's,  had 
taken  orders,  had  taught  vigorously  at  Balliol,  and  had  lashed 
in  the  British  Critic  the  apathy  of  the  Church  and  the  tenets 
of  the  Reformation.  In  an  overgrown  volume,  The  Ideal  of  a 
Christian  Church  (1844),  which  caused  much  stir,  he  'charac- 
terised '  Lutheranism,  '  that  hateful  and  fearful  type  of  Anti- 
christ, in  terms  not  wholly  inadequate  to  its  prodigious  de- 
merits .'  Convocation,  in  consequence ,  boiled  over  and  censured 
Ward.  Why  had  he  signed  the  Articles  ?  He  replied,  so  we 
are  informed  by  Jowett,  that  in  subscribing  they  were  not  '  all 
dishonest,  but  all  honest  together.'  Ward,  anyhow,  was  honest, 
and  was  soon  received  by  Rome,  and  became  one  of  her  picked 
swordsmen,  fighting  Protestant,  Anglican,  liberal  Catholic, 
and  infidel  with  equal  relish.  He  struck  with  one  hand  at 
Sir  John  Acton,  the  freer-minded  English  Catholics,  and  the 
Home  and  Foreign  Review  (1862),  and  with  the  other  at  John 
Stuart  Mill ;  with  whom,  in  a  sporting  spirit,  he  exchanged 
private  letters  on  speculative  subjects  ;  and  his  bouts  with 
Huxley  in  the  Metaphysical  Society  are  historical.  Ward 
believed  in  proving  all  things,  and  in  keeping  the  truth  bright 
continually  by  the   '  tierce  and  quart  of  mind  with  mind.' 


W.  G.  WARD  205 

The  phrase  is  Tennyson's,  concerning  the  '  most  generous  of 
all  Ultramontanes.' 

Ward  had  humour,  and  was  full  of  whim  :  his  active,  buoyant 
style  has  been  too  much  disparaged.  His  quality  is  seen 
in  the  Essays  on  the  Philosophy  of  Theism  (1867-82),  especially 
in  that  on  'Science,  Prayer,  Freewill,  and  Miracles.'  He  dis- 
cusses every  burning  question  of  theology,  but  does  not  enter 
much  into  the  main  stream  of  thought  or  into  the  minds  of 
other  men.  The  empirical  philosophers  were  put  on  their 
mettle  by  Ward's  dialectic.  As  he  is  now  little  read,  one 
expressive  passage  may  be  quoted  : 

We  begin,  then,  with  imagining  two  mice,  endowed,  however, 
with  quasi -human  or  semi -human  intelligence,  enclosed  within  a 
grand  pianoforte,  but  prevented  in  some  way  or  other  from  inter- 
fering with  the  free  play  of  its  machinery.  From  time  to  time  they 
are  delighted  with  the  strains  of  choice  music.  One  of  the  two 
considers  these  to  result  from  some  agency  external  to  the  instru- 
ment ;  but  the  other,  having  a  more  philosophical  mind,  rises  to 
the  conception  of  fixed  laws  and  phenomenal  uniformity.  '  Science 
as  yet,'  he  says,  '  is  but  in  its  infancy,  but  I  have  already  made  one 
or  two  important  discoveries.  .  .  .' 

This  empirical  mouse,  a  John  Mill  in  mouse's  clothing,  finds 
out  some  of  the  sequences,  or  laws  of  the  vibrations,  and  he 
divines  yet  other  laws  :  '  to  their  exploration  I  will  devote 
my  life.'  Next  let  the  piano  become  an  imaginary  instrument, 
a  '  polychordon,'  with  two  hundred  intermediate  '  laws'  between 
the  player  and  the  sound  : 

Well,  successive  generations  of  philosophical  mice  have  actually 
traced  150  of  the  200  phenomenal  sequences,  through  whose  fixed 
and  invariable  laws  the  sound  is  produced.  The  colony  of  mice, 
shut  up  within,  are  in  the  highest  spirits  at  the  success  which  has 
crowned  the  scientific  labours  of  their  leading  thinkers  ;  and  the 
most  eminent  of  them  addresses  an  assembly  :  .  .  .  '  Let  us  re- 
double our  efforts.  I  fully  expect  that  our  grandchildren  will  be 
able  to  predict  as  accurately  for  an  indefinitely  preceding  [sic] 
period  the  succession  of  melodies  with  which  we  are  to  be  delighted, 
as  we  now  predict  the  hours  of  sunrise  and  sunset.  One  thing,  at 
all  events,  is  now  absolutely  incontrovertible.  As  to  the  notion  of 
there  being  some  agency  external  to  the  polychordon — intervening 
with  arbitrary  and  capricious  will  to  produce  the  sounds  we  experi- 
ence^— this  is  a  long-exploded  superstition,  a  mere  dream  and 
dotage  of  the  past.  .  .  . 


206  OXFORD  MOVEMENT 

XIII 

Few  other  writers  of  mark  followed  Newman  to  Rome. 
But  the  Oxford  movement  continued  to  be  a  power  in  letters. 
The  work  of  Stubbs  and  Freeman  shows  its  influence,  in 
diverse  ways,  on  historical  study  ;  and  it  deeply  coloured  the 
stories  of  Miss  Yonge.  In  the  field  of  divinity  only  a  few 
representative  names  can  be  added.  Keble  will  be  mentioned 
again  as  a  literary  critic  (Ch.  x.).  After  the  departure  of 
Newman,  the  most  potent  personage  in  the  Anglican  camp 
was  Edward  Bouverie  Pusey  (1800-82)  ;  he  was  also  its  most 
learned  divine.  Pusey  gave  a  strong  impulse  to  the  study  of 
the  early  ages  of  the  Church,  and  to  that  of  German  theology ; 
he  spent  much  of  his  life  in  resisting  liberalism,  university 
reform,  and  the  modern  spirit  generally.  Pusey  has  something 
of  the  massive  manner  of  our  older  theologians,  but  his  admirers 
seldom  claim  a  place  in  literature  for  his  many  volumes.  The 
most  acute  and  weighty  thinker  that  remained  in  the  fold  was 
James  Bowling  Mozley  x  (1813-78),  a  pattern  of  the  cautious, 
able  English  Churchman,  who  remains  firmly  on  the  defensive, 
yet  is  quite  ready  to  make  a  counter-attack.  In  his  Bampton 
lectures  on  miracles,  Mozley  grapples  hard  with  Mill  ;  elsewhere 
he  assails  the  cult  of  Comte,  tries  to  bring  Maurice  to  the 
point,  derides  the  eclectic  church  of  Dr.  Arnold,  and  is  strong 
on  the  insufficiencies  of  Luther.  He  distrusts  Carlyle's  hero- 
worship,  especially  in  the  case  of  Cromwell.  We  see  the  spell 
of  Newman  persisting,  when  Mozley  hails  the  Grammar  of 
Assent,  as  '  a  powerful  defence  of  a  common  Christianity.' 
Mozley's  ink  is  rather  thick  ;  he  is  a  slow  and  hampered  writer, 
but  full  of  matter,  with  a  streak  in  him  of  Bishop  Butler  ;  and 
sermons  like  those  on  the  Pharisees  and  on  gratitude  recall 
Bourdaloue  in  their  turn  for  moral  analysis.  His  style  satisfies 
the  brain  much  better  than  Newman's,  for  his  transitions  and 
connexions  are  logical  rather  than  emotional. 

The  truest  man  of  letters  among  the  orthodox  divines  who 
remained  was  the  historian  of  the  Oxford  movement,  Richard 
William  Church2  (1815-90),  Dean  of  St.  Paul's.  Church 
embodies  the  comparative  stability  and  peace  of  mind  that 
ensued  after  the  foreign  elements  had  been  expelled  from  the 
Anglican  system.  His  clear  and  fair  outlook  is  welcome  after 
so  many  partisan  readings  of  history  ;  and  his  style,  though 
it  entirely  lacks  the  sting,  the  restlessness,  and  the  subtle 
strangeness  of  Newman's,  is  an  excellent  one,  and  well  befits 
his  task,  which  is  threefold.     Church  is  preacher,  historian, 


DEAN  CHURCH  207 

and  critic.  His  sermons  and  addresses,  such  as  those  on  the 
Gifts  of  Civilisation,  or  on  Early  Sacred  Poetry  (in  which  he 
introduces  the  Vedas  to  the  religious  public  through  Max 
Muller's  translation)  have  a  markedly  historical  cast.  Indeed, 
he  is  at  his  best,  and  most  at  his  ease,  in  a  big  rapid  review. 
Church  is  thoroughly  well  informed,  the  very  opposite  of  a 
sciolist,  though  he  left  no  large  monument  of  his  powers.  He 
usually  plays  the  part  of  a  safe  and  masterly  populariser  who 
has  escaped  the  snares  of  that  industry.  He  writes  first  of 
all  for  the  cultivated  layman,  for  whom  he  makes  matters 
easy  without  stooping  to  concessions  or  becoming  '  unscientific.' 
His  sense  of  proportion  and  perspective,  not  always  present 
in  the  professional  digger,  is  constant,  and  is  well  seen  in  his 
small  book  on  The  Beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages  (1877),  a  sketch 
of  some  eight  centuries  and  lucid  in  its  plan — a  good  map  not 
cumbered  by  a  crowd  of  names.  The  article  (1854)  on  The 
Early  Ottomans,  like  that  on  Cassiodorus,  shows  the  same 
qualities,  though  the  Oriental  lore  is  avowedly  second-hand. 
St.  Anselm  (1870)  is  a  monograph  which  is  based  on  research, 
and  has  held  its  place,  and  it  forms  a  transition  to  Church's 
critical  or  appreciative  papers. 

Here  again  he  is  first  of  all  an  introducer  and  interpreter. 
The  Dante  scholar,  weighted  by  his  load,  or  hump,  of  learning, 
too  often  repels  the  mere  lover  of  letters.  Church's  essay  on 
Dante  (1850)  makes  us  wish  to  read  that  poet.  He  was  abreast 
of  contemporary  scholarship  ;  and  though  much  has  been 
added  since  to  Dante  lore,  the  value  of  the  essay,  with  its  exalted 
enthusiasms,  its  sympathy  with  the  austerity  and  still  more 
with  the  tenderness  of  the  poet,  and  its  lightness  of  movement, 
is  little  affected.  One  of  Church's  best  and  most  characteristic 
passages  is  his  praise  of  the  Purgatorio,  to  be  found  in  his  pre- 
face to  Vernon's  Readings  in  that  poem  (1889).  The  same 
relish  for  good  poetry  is  found  in  his  paper  on  Wordsworth, 
and,  with  some  qualifications,  in  his  book  on  Spenser  (1879). 
Church  was  perhaps  too  rigid,  or  mentally  timid,  to  do  justice 
to  the  Renaissance  ;  he  shrank,  though  some  surprised  and 
reluctant  admiration  is  mixed  with  his  censure,  from  its  i\  II 
tide  of  life.  The  age  of  Machiavelli,  he  once  declares,  could 
not  be  redeemed  even  by  Leonardo  and  Raphael.  This  temper 
is  seen  in  his  otherwise  excellent  book  on  Bacon  (1884),  and  in 
his  essay  on  Montaigne  (1857).  He  feels  bound  to  preach  not 
a  little  ;  yet  he  enters,  calling  resolutely  on  his  constitutional 
fairness,  with  unexpected  vigour  into  the  windings  of  the 
sceptical  spirit,  so  alien  to  his  own.    We  can  turn  for  relief, 


208  BROAD  CHURCH 

if  we  like,  to  Pater's  Gaston  de  Latour,  with  its  free  and  in- 
timate treatment  of  Montaigne. 

Church's  chronicle  of  The  Oxford  Movement,  1833-1845,  is 
both  history  and  portraiture,  and  appeared  in  1891.  He  had 
been  and  remained  a  friend  of  Newman,  he  had  known  the  other 
dramatis  personoz,  both  those  who  had  stayed  behind  and  those 
who  had  crossed  over  ;  and  he  had  played  his  own  part  in  the 
story,  which  he  tells  with  an  almost  impossible  equity  and 
avoidance  of  emphasis,  on  the  historical,  the  political,  and  the 
personal  side  alike .  He  wrote  the  book  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  the  dust  had  settled.  His  own  standpoint  is  made  clear 
in  various  tracts  and  pamphlets,  and  especially  in  his  Lancelot 
Andrewes  (1877),  where  he  defends  the  English  Reformation  and 
church  settlement ;  its  very  compromises  and  inconsistencies 
appeal  to  him  as  part  of  its  historic  task.  Church's  writing, 
everywhere,  is  of  a  good  academic  stamp.  It  cannot  be  called 
masculine,  or  very  genial,  but  it  is  pure  and  equable,  not  always 
without  colour,  and  never  common.  Reserve,  or  a  certain 
didactic  turn,  or  some  other  obstacle,  keeps  it  from  being  easy  to 
remember.  With  the  dignified  figure  of  Church  our  fist  of  the 
divines  who  sprang  from  the  Oxford  Movement  must  end, 
at  the  cost  of  excluding  the  eloquent  preacher  and  apolo- 
gist, Henry  Parry  Liddon,  and  others.  Some  of  its  offspring 
will  appear  amongst  the  novelists ;  others,  who  broke  away 
leftwards,  like  James  Anthony  Froude,  are  discussed  in  other 
connexions. 

XIV 

The  liberal  divines  within  the  Church  have  left  less  salvage 
for  letters  than  might  be  expected  from  the  share  they  took  in 
the  formation  of  English  opinion.  At  first,  in  the  common 
rooms  of  the  Thirties,  they  were  styled  '  noetics,'  x  or,  as  we 
might  say,  '  intellectuals  '  ;  but  after  the  middle  of  the  century 
they  came  to  be  known,  somewhat  unwillingly,  as  'Broad 
Churchmen.'  2  After  1860,  the  year  of  Essays  and  Revieios, 
their  foes  gave  them  other  names  like  '  latitudinarian,'  an  old 
term  revived .  Their  effort  is  scattered  ;  they  touch  on  doctrine , 
exegesis,  history,  and  the  humanities,  and  philosophy  and 
education,  at  points  mutually  distant.  From  the  nature  of  the 
case  they  disagree  among  themselves,  and  have  no  common 
body  of  articles,  even  in  the  negative  sense.  But  they  have  a 
common  spirit  and  tradition.  It  is  the  modern  spirit  cautiously 
imbibed  ;  it  is  the  tradition  of  the  rights  of  reason,  temperately 
claimed.     It   was   thus   that   Hampden,   Hare,   and   Thomas 


WHATELY— HAMPDEN  209 

Arnold  in  one  generation,  Maurice  and  Stanley  and  Jowett 
in  the  next,  tried  to  reanimate  their  church.  Not,  of  course,  as 
the  Anglo  -Cat  holies  did,  through  medisevalism.  The  broad 
churchmen  are  of  the  Left  Centre,  and  face  leftward.  Yet, 
rather  to  the  general  surprise,  they  stoutly  keep  their  seats, 
conscience-clear,  and  refuse  to  be  chased  or  pelted  in  that 
direction  by  missiles  from  the  Right.  They  have  counted  for 
much,  and  for  good,  in  our  public  life  ;  in  schools,  and  colleges, 
and  pulpits,  and  in  philanthropic  and  liberal  enterprise.  They 
also  did  much,  amongst  them,  for  learning,  and  much  too  for 
the  diffusion  and  propagation,  if  not  strictly  for  the  original 
advancement,  of  thought.  Their  love  for  mental  compromise 
acquires  the  force  of  a  principle.  They  fill  their  place  in  the 
intellectual  series  lying  between  such  extremes  as  William  George 
Ward  and  Herbert  Spencer.  Their  influence  and  merits  are  not 
to  be  rated  by  their  thoroughness  or  consistency  in  speculation. 

Their  fighting  archbishop,  Richard  Whately,  quitted  Oriel 
for  Dublin  in  1831,  and  lived  and  wrote  till  1863.  He  had 
already  produced  his  Bampton  lectures,  his  Historic  Doubts, 
his  Logic  and  his  Rhetoric.  He  edited  and  amplified  the  work 
of  Paley,  and  carried  it  on  in  his  robust  way.  Religion  has  still 
to  be  '  proved  by  evidences,'  in  open  court  ;  and  abundant 
emphasis,  though  not  much  heart  or  imagination,  is  put  into 
the  task.  Religion,  so  conceived,  does  not  include  the  special 
tenets,  nor  does  it  allow  for  the  emotions,  either  of  the  Oxford 
High  Churchman  or  of  the  Evangelical  Protestant.  Whately 
thinks  he  can  refute  feeling  by  many  discourses.  He  belongs, 
like  Bentley  and  Whewell,  to  the  fear-family  of  writers  ;  his 
claws  and  hug  leave  their  marks.  The  notes  to  Bacon's  Essays, 
and  the  'apothegms'  in  the  Commonplace  Book  (1818-61) 
display  Whately 's  acuteness  and  hardheadedness.  His  largest 
conception,  namely  the  broadening  of  the  basis  of  the  Church, 
sank  into  the  mind  of  Newman,  who  had  sat  under  him  at 
Oriel,  and  who  was  to  give  to  it,  in  Whately's  opinion,  a  truly 
pestilent  turn. 

A  typical  writer  of  another  stamp  was  Renn  Dickson  Hampden, 
who  was  appointed  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity,  in  spite  of  his 
Bampton  lectures  of  1832,  to  the  fury  of  the  High  Church  party. 
His  book  is  singular  and  by  no  means  dull  reading.  Hampden 
was  learned,  not  only  in  Aristotle,  but  in  the  historical  changes  of 
theological  terms,  and  foreshadows  the  critical  treatment  of  the 
subject.  Theology,  he  declares,  cannot  be  an  exact  science  ; 
the  language  of  scripture  is  not  technical,  and  fathers  and 
councils  have  no  right  to  go  beyond  it.  There  has  been  a 
VOL.  i.  0 


210  BROAD  CHURCH 

'  mystery  attached  to  the  subject  which  is  not  a  mystery  of 
God.'  Still  Hampden  professes  and  duly  recites  the  funda- 
mental dogmas.  His  consistency  in  so  doing  was  assailed  by 
Newman  and  others  ;  but  he  continued,  in  a  second  edition,  to 
protest  that  he  was  innocent  of  heresy. 

The  implements  of  German  exegesis,  of  physical  science,  and 
of  literary  criticism  had  thus  long  been  at  work  on  the  accepted 
theology  ;  and  in  1860  there  came,  within  the  pale,  the  in- 
evitable shock.  The  volume  of  Essays  and  Reviews1  is  now 
mild  reading,  and  only  one  of  its  seven  essays  endures.  This, 
apparently  the  least  heterodox  of  all,  is  Mark  Pattison's  on  the 
Tendencies  of  Religions  Thought  in  England,  1688-1750,  a 
luminous  and  learned  inquiry.  Here,  as  always,  Pattison's  pen 
is  like  a  graving-tool,  and  his  standpoint  is  scientific.  Jowett's 
paper  On,  the  Interpretation  of  Scripture  contains  large  views 
and  sharp  sayings,  but  is  somewhat  diplomatic,  and  lacks  the 
freshness  of  his  Pauline  discourses.  Temple's  paper  On  the 
Education  of  the  World  is  a  harmless  account  of  the  services  which 
Greece,  Rome,  and  Judaea  have  done  for  mankind.  The  essays 
that  really  drew  blood  from  the  orthodox  were,  first  of  all, 
Rowland  Williams's  review  (of  Bunsen's  inquiries)  which 
refined  away,  to  say  the  least,  the  evidence  for  inspiration, 
prophecy,  and  miracle  ;  secondly,  the  historical  survey  by 
H.  B.  Wilson,  the  planner  of  the  volume,  with  its  glance  at 
other  Eastern  races  than  the  Jewish  ;  and  further,  the  study 
of  evidences  by  a  veteran  disputant  and  mathematician,  Baden 
Powell.  The  book  was  condemned  as  to  some  points  by  the 
church  courts,  but  their  decision  was  reversed  by  the  Privy 
Council,  and  the  number  of  opinions  on  matters  of  faith,  legally 
tenable  by  Anglican  shepherds,  was  distinctly  multiplied. 
According  to  an  epigram  of  the  hour,  '  hell  was  dismissed  with 
costs .'  All  of  which  so  far  bears  upon  our  record  that  the  Church, 
with  her  mental  boundaries  now  more  elastic,  comes  to  con- 
tribute more  to  pure  literature.  The  next  notable  discussion 
of  the  kind  was  to  be  in  1889.  Then  came  another  joint  pro- 
duction, Lux  Mundi,  wherein  negotiations  with  secular  thought 
were  opened  by  the  truant  grandsons  of  Puseyism. 

XV 

The  brilliant  season  of  the  '  Broad  Church  '  was  the  third 
quarter  of  the  century,  and,  for  our  purpose,  Maurice,  Jowett, 
and  Stanley  may  be  taken  as  its  representatives.  A  shadowy 
figure  now  in  literature,  though  a  most  copious  writer,  John 


MAURICE-JOWETT  211 

Frederick  Denison  Maurice  (1805-72)  exercised  a  deep  influ- 
ence on  the  course  of  religious  sentiment  in  England.  The 
historians  of  doctrine  are  hard  put  to  it  to  define  his  tenets. 
No  markedly  original  idea  is  linked  with  his  name  ;  he  is  justly 
taxed  with  much  elusiveness  and  obscurity  in  thought  and 
style  ;  he  seems  hardly  to  have  had  any  mental  centre.  His 
personal  character  was  lofty,  self-sacrificing,  courageous,  and 
full  of  charm.  He  has  a  gallant  record  as  a  fighter  for  social 
and  educational  reform.  But  this  by  itself  would  not  account 
for  his  note  as  a  divine.  Maurice  took  one  or  two  large  and 
generous  conceptions,  already  in  the  air,  applied  them  in  many 
fields,  and,  without  ever  strictly  working  them  out,  gave  them 
a  living  currency.  He  impelled  to  the  historical  study  of  the 
religious  spirit  by  his  effort  to  find  the  points  of  common  aspira- 
tion in  Christian  and  non-Christian  creeds.  He  also  dreamed 
of  an  eirenikon  between  the  Christian  churches,  which  no  one 
exactly  accepted,  and  was  of  course  attacked  by  those  whom 
he  strove  to  reconcile.  He  disagreed  with  High  and  Low 
Church,  and  Nonconformist  alike,  as  to  the  dogmas  which 
could  be  safely  and  rightly  sacrificed  ;  and  having  consider- 
able dialectical  skill,  coupled  with  a  good  deal  of  asperity  in 
debate,  and  also  being  very  hard  to  pin  down  to  a  positive 
profession,  Maurice  caused  wrath  and  perplexity.  A  mystical 
element  in  his  mind  separates  him  from  the  secular  and  ration- 
alising camp  of  Broad  Churchmen.  But  he  was  a  solvent ;  and 
his  power  is  not  to  be  measured  by  philosophical  or  artistic 
tests.  His  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  and  his  Reli- 
gions of  the  World,  are  ambitious  and  pre -critical  works.  His 
rejoinder  to  Mansel's  celebrated  Bampton  lectures  is  elaborate 
and  wordy.  His  most  popular  work,  The  Kingdom  of  Christ, 
which  is  still  reprinted  and  which  sets  forth  his  plea  for  the 
unity  of  religion,  is  by  no  means  clear-cut  in  its  thinking.  His 
volume  of  essays,  The  Friendship  of  Books,  has  little  substance. 
Maurice's  letters,  too,  which  enhance  our  impression  of  his 
wide,  exalted,  and  inspiring  mind,  show  his  want  of  defining  or 
shaping  power. 

In  point  of  courage,  address,  and  width  of  experience, 
Benjamin  Jowett 1  (1817-93)  may  figure  as  the  Odysseus 
among  the  liberal  divines.  He  did  not,  indeed,  travel  in  the 
body  ;  he  stayed  at  Balliol,  first  as  tutor,  then  as  master  ; 
was,  as  he  said,  '  married '  to  his  college  ;  made  it  finally  the 
premier  college,  and  himself  the  chief  potentate,  in  Oxford. 
He  fought  steadily,  cunningly,  and  successfully  for  many 
academic  improvements,  and  did  more  than  all  the  rest  to 


212  BROAD  CHURCH 

make  the  university  a  power  in  the  nation.  He  never  wel- 
comed, or  perhaps  understood,  the  true  and  ancient,  the  con- 
tinental idea  of  a  university  as  mainly  a  nursery  of  learning, 
and  he  lacked  the  stern  devotion  to  knowledge  which  distin- 
guishes Mark  Pattison,  as  well  as  Pattison's  note  of  intellectual 
pertinacity  and  consistency.  Jowett  was  a  man  of  intellect, 
of  course,  but  of  much  more  character  than  intellect.  His 
literary  judgements *  were  apt  to  be  narrow  and  blind.  He 
left  his  mark  on  many  men  who  have  made  history,  and  whom 
Plato  had  taught  him  to  train  for  the  good  of  the  state  ;  it  is 
true  that  he  lectured  them  all  their  lives,  but  they  did  not 
seem  to  mind  that  ;  he  had  also  taught  them  how  to  get  on, 
and  told  them  what  to  do,  making  it  plain  that  he  did  not 
readily  forgive  failure.  He  had  an  extraordinary  gift  for 
shepherding  kindness,  backed  by  hard  severity,  and  had  also  a 
gift  for  friendship.  But  Jowett,  with  all  his  world -worship 
and  adroitness,  had  further  a  deep  strain  of  idealism  ;  and  he 
influenced  ideas  considerably,  although  his  mind  was  not 
originative,  through  the  spoken  and  the  written  word.  He 
had,  indeed,  his  own  mental  Odyssey,  which  is  curious  and 
representative  of  the  time,  though  it  resulted  in  no  particular 
contribution  to  thought. 

He  began  as  a  theologian,  with  the  Germans  ;  studied  Baur, 
and  also  Kant  ;  and  was  awhile,  despite  his  unconstructive 
mind,  much  inspired  and  enlarged  by  Hegel.  In  1855  he  pro- 
duced an  edition  of  the  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians,  Gala- 
tians,  and  Romans,  which  was  much  besprinkled  with  heretical 
and  subtle  remarks.  The  essays  on  '  natural  religion  '  and  on 
'  The  imputation  of  the  sin  of  Adam  '  show  the  finer  edge  of 
Jowett 's  style,  and  are  among  the  freshest  of  his  writings. 
His  singular  mixture  of  piety  and  scepticism  is  already  apparent. 
In  the  end  he  came  to  distrust  philosophical  and  theological 
system,  and  his  religious  doctrines  were,  latterly  at  least,  vague 
and  attenuated.  In  a  remarkable  memorandum  2  of  1886, 
he  forecasts  apparently  without  antipathy,  the  victory  of 
something  very  like  the  pure  agnostic  position  ('  doctrines  may 
become  unmeaning  words  ')  : 

Yet  the  essence  of  religion  may  still  be  self-sacrifice,  self-denial, 
a  death  unto  life,  having  for  its  rule  and  absolute  morality,  a  law 
of  God  and  nature — a  doctrine  common  to  Plato  and  the  Gospel. 

This  was  written  in  Jowett 's  old  age,  but  his  earlier  writings 
can  be  read  in  the  light  of  it.  His  paper  in  Essays  and  Reviews 
has  been  mentioned  already.     Such  utterances,  as  well  as 


JOWETT— STANLEY  213 

his  zeal  for  reform,  exposed  him  for  a  time  to  a  bigoted  perse- 
cution, which  deservedly  strengthened  his  influence. 

His  lasting  performance  is  a  translation  of  all  the  dialogues 
of  Plato,  accompanied  by  introductions.  It  first  appeared  in 
1871,  and  was  afterwards  much  revised.  The  Greek  scholar- 
ship in  this  great  work  would  not,  it  appears,  always  have 
satisfied  Browning's  Grammarian  ;  sometimes  the  exact  mean- 
ing was  altered  in  the  process  of  refining  away  every  trace  of 
effort  from  the  style,  but  the  same  process  adds  to  the  delicacy 
and  naturalness  of  the  English,  which  rises  or  falls,  becomes 
exalted  or  playful  or  homely,  just  like  the  original.  Jowett 
when  translating  paid  great  attention  to  his  rhythm,  rewriting 
again  and  again,  and  was  well  rewarded  for  the  toil.  He  also 
published  a  similar  version  of  Thucydides  ;  it  is  smooth,  and 
therefore  unlike  Thucydides  ;  but  the  combing-out  of  tangled 
sentences  was  part  of  the  plan.  Some  of  the  essays  in  the 
Plato  carry  the  art  of  exposition  to  a  very  nice  point,  and  con- 
tain much  of  the  editor's  philosophy  of  life  as  well  as  Plato's. 

Jowett's  own  prose  has  a  somewhat  ambiguous  quality, 
which  is  felt  in  reading  his  lectures  and  college  sermons,  and 
which  could  also  be  felt  by  the  listener.  Who  could  forget 
that  strange  figure,  with  the  pink  and  silver  colouring,  the 
bitter-sweet  voice,  the  studied  silences,  the  reverend  bearing, 
the  secular  epigrams,  the  cool  oracular  evasion  of  merciless 
ultimate  questions  ?  Manner  and  prestige  told  for  much  in 
the  effect.  There  were  commonplaces  without  number,  shrilled 
out  in  the  shape  of  mild  paradox,  and  there  were  flashes  too  of 
noble  good  sense  and  observation.  The  English  was  pure 
and  clear,  indeed  fastidiously  graceful  as  to  diction,  and  thor- 
oughly well  expressing  the  utmost  that  Jowett  had  to  say  ; 
the  sentences  were  staccato  in  delivery,  but  are  less  so  in  the 
reading.  Other  rhetorical  effects,  of  the  kind  so  well  managed 
by  eminent  pulpit  voices  of  that  hour  (compressa  quiescunt) 
like  Liddon's  or  Magee's,  were  wholly  absent.  This  was  Jowett 
in  his  latter  plenitude  of  local  authority ;  perhaps  he  is  to  be 
thought  of  most  cordially  as  he  seems  to  have  been  in  earlier 
days — fighting,  often  alone,  against  obscurantism,  dreaming 
of  '  Plato  and  the  Gospels,'  and  loosening  the  mental  crust  of 
the  ancient  city. 

Jowett's  friend  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley1  (1815-81),  Dean 
of  Westminster,  the  chief  dignitary  and  popular  apostle  of  the 
Broad  Church  movement,  and  a  valiant  champion  of  toleration, 
both  ecclesiastical  and  academic,  was  also  a  copious  and 
successful  writer.    He  has  much  more  style  than  Maurice,  and 


214  BROAD  CHURCH 

much  less  than  Jowett  ;  his  rather  flowery  English  is  not 
cheap  or  common  ;  but  little  of  his  work  seems  to  have  the 
mark  of  permanence.  His  first  noticeable  book,  the  Life  of 
Thomas  Arnold  (1844),  skilfully  and  piously  executed,  is  still 
widely  read  ;  its  chief  interest,  however,  lies  in  Arnold's  letters. 
Sinai  and  Palestine  (1856)  is  an  attractive  geographical  and 
historical  record  interspersed  with  notes  of  travel.  Stanley's 
liberalism  was  rooted  in  the  historical  and  concrete  bent  of  his 
mind.  By  history  he  understood  the  picturesque  realisation 
of  the  past,  and  the  sympathetic  tracing  of  the  fortunes  of 
institutions  and  ideas.  Himself  in  the  thick  of  affairs,  he  bids 
the  student  of  the  Creeds  imagine  the  actual  process  by  which 
they  were  hammered  out  into  a  compromise,  after  the  manner 
of  committees  : 

a  new  turn  given  to  one  sentiment,  a  charitable  colour  thrown  over 
another  ;  the  edge  of  a  sharp  exclusion  blunted  by  one  party,  the 
sting  of  a  bitter  sarcasm  drawn  by  another.  Regard  confessions  of 
faith  in  their  only  true  historical  light. 

The  doctrinal  point  of  view  is  again  submerged  by  the 
historical  in  Stanley's  Lectures  on  History  of  the  Eastern  Church 
(1861)  and  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish  Church  (1863-76).  He 
drew  much  inspiration  from  Ewald  ;  but  his  own  work  in  these 
regions  is  that  of  a  populariser.  His  views  on  doctrine  and 
polity,  as  set  forth  in  his  Christian  Institutions  (1881)  show  the 
distinctive  uncertainty,  or  Halbheit,  which  marks  his  school, 
and  which  consists  with  the  purest  sincerity.  He  was  more  on 
his  native  ground  in  his  Historical  Memorials  of  Canterbury 
(1855)  and  of  Westminster  Abbey  (1865).  Stanley  gave  new 
life,  not  only  to  the  historical  spirit,  but  also  to  the  old  seven- 
teenth-century text,  with  all  its  practical  corollaries,  that '  vitals 
in  religion  are  few.'  He  drove  home  to  the  popular  mind — 
in  terms  however  vague — the  conception  that  the  category  of 
growth  applies  to  the  future  as  well  as  to  the  past  of  theological 
beliefs  and  institutions.  In  his  ardour  for  a  larger  compre- 
hensiveness and  charity  he  often  recalls  Chillingworth,  or  Hales, 
or  the  author  of  The  Liberty  of  Prophesying,  though  all  these 
are  stronger  writers  than  Stanley. 


XVI 

Amongst  the  scholar  clerics  the  strongest  and  most  original 
spirit,  the  most  learned  man,  and  the  best  writer  was  Mark 
Pattison  1  (1813-S4),  Rector  of  Lincoln  College.    He  published 


PATTISON  215 

little  ;  but  his  stylus  is  pen  and  dagger  in  one.  Pattisoh 
narrates  his  own  mental  history  up  to  the  year  1860  in  his 
Memoirs,  which  were  posthumously  published,  and  the  sequel 
to  which  was  withheld  ;  for  he  spared  his  contemporaries,  living 
or  dead,  no  more  than  himself.  He  came  from  an  Evangelical 
home  ;  was  at  first  swept  along  by  Newman,  writing  two  lives 
of  the  Saints  and  doing  some  translations  ;  but  after  a  time, 
and  many  struggles,  he  revolted  and  escaped.  He  quitted  first 
the  Anglican  and  then  the  '  Catholic  '  standpoint  ;  became  and 
found  his  real  bent  as  a  humanist ;  and  gave  his  life  to  study. 
What  Pattison  says  of  Macaulay  is  true  of  himself :  'his  command 
of  literature  was  imperial.'  In  Oxford  he  stood  for  and  ful- 
filled the  old  ideals  of  scholarship,  which  he  truly  judged  were 
being  smothered  by  a  parasitic  system  of  examinations,  tutors, 
and  committees.  The  Memoirs  and  the  Suggestions  for 
Academical  Organisation  (1868)  embody  his  academic  views. 
Pattison  was  also,  less  nobly,  embittered  by  an  intrigue  which 
robbed  him  for  many  years  of  his  college  headship.  He  became 
a  recluse  and  somewhat  formidable  figure,  admired  by  a  small 
public . 

He  was  perhaps  most  at  home  in  the  literature,  both  lighter 
and  graver,  of  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth 
centuries.  His  most  substantial  volume  is  his  Isaac  Casaubon 
(1875)  ;  here,  as  usual,  he  does  work  which  need  not  be  done 
again,  and  converts  his  great  learning  into  literature.  The  out- 
lines of  a  still  more  notable  work  on  Joseph  Scaliger  are  to  be 
seen  in  a  magazine  article  and  in  a  fragment  which  has  been 
saved.  He  wrote  on  Erasmus,  More,  and  Grotius  (and  also  on 
Macaulay)  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica.  The  Renaissance 
he  approached  less  as  a  flourishing-time  of  art  and  poetry  than 
as  a  new  birth  in  '  the  grand  development  of  human  reason  '  : 
and  this  process,  again,  he  studied  less  on  the  purely  philosophic 
side  than  as  laying  the  foundations  of  critical  knowledge.  His 
own  ultimate  creed,  he  tells  us,  was  slowly  won  ;   he  passed* 

to  that  highest  development  when  all  religions  appear  in  their 
historical  light,  as  efforts  of  the  human  spirit  to  come  to  an  under- 
standing with  that  Unseen  Power  whose  pressure  it  feels,  but  whose 
motives  are  a  riddle. 

But  the  reference  to  pure  thought  and  pure  letters  always 
invigorates  Pattison's  writing,  and  is  well  seen  in  his  treatment 
of  the  poets  and  theologians. 

His  paper,  already  named,  in  Essays  and  Reviews,  upon  the 
Tendencies  of  Religious  Thought  in  England,  lb'SS  to  1750,  has 


216  BROAD  CHURCH 

worn  well,  and  is  a  worthy  companion  to  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  His 
Milton  (1879)  is  still  the  best  short  book  on  the  subject  in 
existence.  Here,  and  in  his  edition  of  Milton's  sonnets, 
Pattison  responds  to  the  grace  as  well  as  to  the  grandeur 
of  the  poet.  Again,  in  his  editions  of  Pope's  Essay  on  Man 
and  Satires  and  Epistles,  his  conversance  with  the  mind  of  the 
time  and  the  byways  of  literature  is  most  remarkable.  His 
fairly  numerous  periodical  articles  and  reviews  have  the  same 
stamp ;  the  Academy,  in  the  Seventies  and  Eighties,  contains 
many  of  his  notices  that  are  worth  unburying,  including  one 
on  George  Meredith's  Poems  and  Lyrics  of  the  Joy  of  Earth  (1883). 
His  style  is  hardly  popular,  though  its  lighter  side  is  seen  in  his 
pages  on  University  Novels  ;  but  it  is  never  hard  or  pedantic. 
Its  mark  is  compressed  strength,  united  with  elegance  and 
exactness  ;  and  he  likes  to  pack  his  mind  into  a  Tacitean 
epigram,  as  when  he  calls  the  Oxford  training  '  the  exaltation 
of  smattering  into  a  method.'  His  manner  may  be  considered 
too  scornful,  and  his  life  and  temper  were  superficially  inhuman; 
but  he  often  rises  to  the  higher  strain  : 

I  shared  the  vulgar  fallacy  that  a  literary  life  meant  a  life  devoted 
to  the  making  of  books,  and  that  not  to  be  always  coming  before 
the  public  was  to  be  idle.  It  cost  me  years  more  of  extrication  of 
thought  before  I  rose  to  the  conception  that  the  highest  life  is  the 
art  to  live,  and  that  both  men,  women,  and  books  are  equally 
essential  ingredients  in  such  a  life. 

A  sentence  that  well  illustrates  Pattison's  manner,  and  may 
avert  some  misconceptions  as  to  his  character. 

The  list  of  theologians,  orthodox  or  vagrant,  must  not  be 
extended  further  ;  few  of  the  remainder  belong  to  literature 
proper.  Yet  it  would  be  amiss  not  to  name  Francis  William 
Newman  (1805-97),  the  younger  brother  and  polar  opposite 
of  the  Cardinal ;  though  he  has  left  little  for  our  purpose 
except  his  religious  autobiography,  Phases  of  Faith  (1850). 
The  pilgrimage  of  Francis  Newman  was  from  the  rigid  Evan- 
gelical to  the  Unitarian  point  of  view,  and  he  relates  it  without 
the  moving  grace  of  his  brother,  yet  with  a  simple  sincerity  and 
fervour.  He  has,  it  may  be  hazarded,  a  freer  and  more  open 
mind  than  the  Cardinal.  Another  of  his  books,  entitled  The 
Soul,  its  Sorrows  and  Aspirations  (1849),  shows  a  kindred  strain 
of  interest  in  what  he  calls  '  the  pathology  of  the  spirit,'  and  is 
an  impassioned  effort  to  find  room,  in  a  system  purely  theistic, 
for  the  characteristic  religious  emotions  and  experiences — the 


F.  W.  NEWMAN  217 

feeling  for  the  infinite  and  the  sense  of  sin  and  of  forgiveness. 
Francis  Newman  wrote  besides  on  most  things  under  the  sun 
— mathematics,  Oriental  languages,  history,  divinity — with  un- 
doubted learning  ;  he  translated  Homer  amid  the  mockery  of 
Matthew  Arnold  ;  and  there  seems  to  have  been  some  twist  of 
ineffectual  queerness  in  many  of  his  activities. 

Many  ether  religious  writers  are  perforce  omitted  from  these 
notes.  Names  like  those  of  Lightfoot,  Hort,  and  Westcott, 
and  of  the  many-sided  William  Robertson  Smith,  are  within 
the  competence  of  the  historians  of  biblical  exegesis.  That  of 
the  long-lived  Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen  (1788-1870), 
whose  published  work  falls  very  early  in  the  period,  and  partly 
before  it,  belongs  to  pure  theology  and  devotional  writing,  on 
which  his  influence  was  marked.  So,  too,  the  sermons  of 
Frederick  William  Robertson  (1816-53)  of  Brighton,  posthu- 
mously published  from  notes  and  reports,  won  fame  in  the 
religious  world  for  their  fire  and  independence.  But  the 
record  of  '  applied  literature,'  with  the  problems  of  choice  and 
treatment  which  it  raises,  must  now  draw  to  an  end,  although 
it  will  reappear  at  times  in  the  pages  on  the  travellers  and  essay- 
ists, and  on  the  social  writings  of  Ruskin  and  Matthew  Arnold. 
There  remains  the  literature  which  is  to  be  judged  purely  as 
art  :  the  poetry,  the  fiction,  the  imaginative  or  descriptive 
prose  ;  and  there  remains  also  literary  criticism,  or  the  judge- 
ment of  such  art. 


CHAPTER    IX 
JOHN  RUSKIN 


The  unity  of  John  Ruskin's  x  life  (1819-1900)  and  of  his  purpose, 
at  first  sight  so  distracted,  comes  into  clearer  light  with  time. 
A  generation  has  passed  since  his  labours  ended.  His  writings 
every  scrap,  and  his  letters  and  memoranda,  have  been  edited 
with  pious  care  and  precision.  They  fill  thirty-nine  volumes  ; 
and  a  glance  at  the  last  of  these,  containing  the  big  index,  will 
throw  some  light  on  that  many-faceted,  rash,  and  passionate 
spirit,  which  flung  itself  on  every  theme,  with  unvarying  self- 
confidence,  not  always  with  knowledge,  but  with  arresting 
intensity,  and  with  transparent  honesty  of  aim.  The  face  of 
nature  ;  the  art  of  painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  and 
literature  ;  war  and  trade,  economics  and  education,  the  differ- 
ences and  relations  of  the  sexes  :  over  them  all  Ruskin  ranges, 
trying  to  cover  a  field  for  which  the  mind  of  Goethe  might 
possibly  be  adequate,  and  yet  more  often  profound  than  ridicu- 
lous, more  often  penetrating  than  indiscriminate.  In  expres- 
sion, once  his  style  has  been  matured,  it  is  not  easy  for  him 
to  go  wrong  ;  and  when  we  say  that  Ruskin  writes  ill,  we  are 
mostly  thinking  of  what  he  says,  and  not  of  how  he  has  said  it  ; 
for  his  most  painful  pages  give  his  meaning  as  faithfully  as 
the  wisest  and  sanest.  His  position  as  a  master  of  words  is 
impregnable;  his  position  as  a  critic  and  thinker,  though  a 
high  one,  is  much  more  equivocal.  But  to  estimate  this  with 
any  fulness  a  long  patient  discussion  would  be  needed,  as  well 
as  the  special  gifts  of  the  artist  and  the  economist.  I  shall 
only  try  to  take  certain  bearings  in  the  wide  map  of  his  works, 
a  map  that  is  crowded  with  names,  and  confused  as  to  its 
frontiers  ;  for  within  it  art  and  ethics,  ethics  and  theology, 
theology  and  science,  science  and  art  once  more  are  seen  inter- 
winding  with  endless  curious  enclaves. 

One  clue  at  least  has  been  plain  for  a  long  time.  Ruskin 
did  not,  in  the  midway  of  his  life,  about  the  year  1860,  abruptly 
abandon   art    and   commence   reformer.    He   was    always    a 

218 


MODERN  PAINTERS  219 

reformer,  and  an  artist  he  always  remained.  There  was  only 
a  remarkable  change  of  emphasis.  His  campaign  in  behalf 
of  Turner  and  Tintoret,  of  Gothic  and  the  study  of  natural 
forms,  is  united  by  many  a  thread  to  his  campaign  against  the 
mercantile  economy,  laissez-faire,  and  social  apathy  or  injustice. 
This  connexion  is  best  expressed  by  saying  that  Ruskin  was 
always  a  preacher  ;  he  is,  indeed,  the  last  great  preacher  whom 
the  English  -speaking  nations  have  found.  He  would  be  great 
in  a  different  way — he  would  persuade,  or  revolt,  the  judgement 
in  a  different  way  ;  he  would  not  be^ Ruskin,  if  he  were  not  con- 
cerned, first  and  foremost,  with  pointing  out  the  ways  of  salva- 
tion. And  he  is  a  preacher  with  a  measure  of  religious  doctrine 
— sometimes  more,  sometimes  very  little,  but  always  some — 
in  his  mind,  and  therefore  on  his  lips.  It  is  his  ethical  passion, 
if  anything,  which  binds  all  his  activities  together  ;  to  this  in 
the  end  they  are  all  subordinate.  It  is  the  spring  of  his  best 
and  rarest  utterance  ;  and  also  of  his  principal  weakness, 
which  may  be  defined  as  a  propensity,  borne  along  by  spiritual 
fervour,  and  on  the  wings  of  his  own  eloquence,  to  take  pre- 
mature and  illegitimate  short  cuts  to  some  conclusion  which 
could  only  be  reached  and  assured,  if  at  all,  by  a  long  circuit 
of  reasoning.  But  first  to  sketch  his  career  as  a  man  of  letters. 
The  first  volume  (1843)  of  Modern  Painters  revealed  a  new 
vein  of  wealth.  I  shall  speak  presently  of  Ruskin  as  an  artist 
in  words  ;  but  it  was  clear  that  the  tradition  of  high  philo- 
sophic prose  was  suddenly  refreshed,  that  new  pathways  were 
opened  for  the  imagination,  that  the  criticism  of  art  was  now 
renewed,  almost  created,  in  England,  and  that  a  new  language 
had  been  found,  not  less  exact  than  beautiful,  and  unknown 
even  to  the  poets,  for  the  notation  of  natural  phenomena,  both 
in  themselves  and  as  they  are  represented  in  fine  art.  '  Word- 
painting  '  Ruskin  always  repudiated,  and  it  is  a  phrase  that 
means  little  ;  but  he  had  the  gift  of  translating  the  impressions 
of  the  eye  into  speech,  with  an  accuracy  which  it  was  easy,  in 
the  glow  of  his  images  and  the  melody  of  his  numbers,  to  over- 
look. To  this  gift  he  added  the  gift  of  spiritual  passion  ;  but 
description,  passion,  and  theory  all  served  for  the  present  one 
ruling  purpose.  This  was  to  vindicate  and  interpret  Turner, 
who  had  long  been  noted  and  prosperous,  but  who  had  not 
been  intelligently  valued,  and  whose  later  work  had  been 
attacked  by  journalists  of  the  hour.  Ruskin  also  praised  other 
landscape  painters  of  the  British  school,  such  as  Copley  Fielding. 
As  a  foil,  he  held  up  to  scorn  the  admired  masters  of  the  '  classical 
group,'  especially  Claude  1  and  Salvator  Rosa.    In  later  volumes 


220  JOHN  RUSKIN 

these  censures,  showing  a  peculiar  power  of  mingling  analysis 
with  invective,  were  more  fully  reasoned  out,  and  in  some  in- 
stances qualified.  And  the  book  was  all  the  stranger  because 
it  was  steeped,  as  the  author  was  afterwards  to  deplore,  in  a 
brewage  of  fanatical,  evangelical  sentiment  :  '  to  this  day,' 
we  are  told,  absurdly,  '  the  clear  and  tasteless  poison  of  the  art 
of  Raphael  infects  with  sleep  of  infidelity  the  hearts  of  millions 
of  Christians.' 

Ruskin  was  afterwards  to  leave  a  balanced  judgement  on 
Raphael,  and  to  revise  his  first  volume.  But  nothing  could 
quite  eradicate  the  Protestant  bias.  The  extreme  zeal  of 
it,  and  his  whole  temper  of  mind,  often  led  him,  so  his  first 
readers  might  excusably  think,  to  explain  or  explain  away 
nearly  all  artistic  excellence  in  terms  of  religion  and  the  virtues. 
Yet,  after  all,  one  of  the  prime  virtues,  in  his  eyes,  was  simply 
truthfulness ;  by  which  he  meant  fidelity,  in  observation  and 
in  representation,  to  natural  fact,  though  by  no  means  always 
the  literal  and  complete  portrayal  of  it.  Here,  then,  Ruskin 
was  back  on  strictly  artistic  ground.  Such  truthfulness,  more- 
over, was  a  supreme  characteristic  of  Turner,  whom  he  praised 
for  it  abundantly.  And  who,  then,  in  the  year  1843,  was  the 
anonymous  Ruskin  ? 

n 

Only  his  own  pen  could  have  fitly  contrasted  the  '  two  boy- 
hoods ' — his  own,  and  that  of  Carlyle,  who  was  afterwards  to 
be  his  acknowledged  fountain  of  wisdom.  We  know  the  story 
of  the  struggles  of  Teufelsdrockh.  Ruskin  wrote  in  his  old  age 
a  crystal  narrative  of  his  youth,  Prceterita,  in  which  he  relates 
his  surprising  early  good  fortune  ;  and  indeed  he  needed  all  the 
happiness  that  his  Fors  might  give  him,  for  prelude  to  a  fife 
that  was  to  have  more  than  its  share  of  discord  and  tragedy. 
He  was  precocious  ;  and  his  home,  like  Milton's,  though  in 
some  ways  strictly  puritanical,  did  not  by  any  means  starve 
his  imagination.  His  parents  believed  in  him,  and  they  were 
very  well  to  do  ;  the  father,  the  '  entirely  honest  merchant,'  in 
the  wine -trade,  and  a  sagacious  guide  in  affairs,  perceived  his 
son's  genius  ;  and  the  son  was  left,  like  Milton,  to  follow  his 
star.  He  was  somewhat  unhappily  sheltered  from  healthy 
mental  rough  and  tumble  with  his  peers.  But  he  lived  near 
the  London  galleries,  he  was  taken  abroad  to  IVance,  Switzer- 
land, and  Italy,  and  he  knew  Turner  well  personally.  His  own 
drawings  were  most  faithful  and  delicate,  and  he  soon  wrote 
remarkable  prose  ;  as  well  as  verse  in  plenty,  which  counts  for 


UPBRINGING— THEORY  OF  BEAUTY  221 

little.  He  went  to  Christ  Church,  but  got  little  from  the  regular 
studies  of  the  place,  unless  we  are  to  credit  them  with  inspiring 
the  enthusiasm  for  Plato  which  colours  much  of  his  thinking. 
He  wrote  on  Alpine  geology  in  Loudon's  Magazine  of  Natural 
History  ;  and  his  papers  (1837-8)  in  the  Architectural  Magazine 
upon  '  The  Poetry  of  Architecture  '  visibly  forecast  the  subject 
and  temper  of  the  Stones  of  Venice.  He  had  also  made,  though 
he  did  not  print,  a  defence  of  Turner  against  the  tirades  of 
Blackwood's.  Thus,  though  a  very  new  graduate,  being  only 
twenty-four,  when  the  noted  first  volume  came  out,  Ruskin  was 
by  no  means  unpractised. 

The  book  was  at  once  recognised  ;  English  art  criticism  being 
then  in  a  very  poor  and  parochial  condition,  and  having  fallen 
as  far  behind  artistic  production  as  the  Elizabethan  critics,  in 
1600,  fell  behind  the  poetry  that  was  sounding  in  their  ears. 
Hazlitt,  the  most  eloquent  lover  of  pictures  in  the  last  age, 
had  died  in  1830.  Ruskin  has  little  to  say  to  Hazlitt,  drawing 
chiefly  upon  Burke,  Reynolds,  and  Dugald  Stewart ;  of  whom 
Reynolds  had  by  far  the  most  to  teach  him.  But  Reynolds  he 
was  to  attack,  ten  years  later,  respectfully  but  strongly,  for  his 
heresy  (already  well  denounced  by  Blake),  that  the  grand  style 
in  painting  consists  in  an  abstract  and  general  treatment  of 
the  object,  and  not  in  fidelity  to  particulars.  This  criticism 
was  to  be  developed  in  the  third  volume  (1856)  of  Modern 
Painters.  Meantime  Ruskin's  own  verbal  notes  of  nature  were 
themselves  concrete  and  true.  He  gave  eyes,1  to  all  who  could 
use  them,  for  cloud  and  sunlight  and  the  shapes  of  shadows, 
for  flower  and  leafage,  for  ice  and  flame,  for  stone  and  crystal, 
for  serpent  and  bird — in  fact  for  opera  omnia  ;  and  he  was  ever 
ready  with  his  fervent  Benedicite.  And,  he  says  in  effect, 
although  truth  of  presentation  is  the  artist's  first  law,  it  must 
be  truth  working  under  the  further  law  of  the  imagination  ; 
no  Dutch  literalism,  or  delineation  hair  by  hair,  being  sufficient 
or  useful  for  art.  I  am  anticipating  much  that  comes  out 
plainer  in  the  subsequent  volumes  of  Modern  Painters  but  is 
traceable  from  the  first,  when  I  add  that  on  this  great  body 
of  observations,  drawn  partly  from  nature  and  partly  from 
painting,  Ruskin  builds  up  his  immense,  and  often  fragile, 
superstructure  of  values,  ethical,  spiritual,  and  theological ; 
a  procedure  which  he  follows,  indeed,  in  all  his  works.  But 
the  stride  which  had  been  made  in  the  actual  analysis  of  art  is 
better  realised  in  the  second  volume,  published  in  1846.  Here 
Ruskin  expounds  a  complex  conception  of  beauty,  draws  upon 
the  poets  as  well  as  the  painters,  goes  wider  afield  for  his 


222  JOHN  RUSKIN 

examples,  and  reveals  the  true  magnificence  of  his  descriptive 
power,  as  well  as  the  fuller  harmonies  of  his  prose. 

For  he  had  meanwhile  travelled  through  the  galleries  of 
France  and  the  Swiss  valleys,  had  reached  Venice,  and  had 
found  Tintoret,  whom  in  this  second  volume  he  glorifies.  The 
manner,  which  he  afterwards  regretted  that  he  had  modelled 
upon  Hooker's,  leaves  some  impression  of  artifice,  but  it  is  a 
dignified,  spacious  medium  for  an  elaborate  theory  x  of  the 
beautiful.  This  theory,  which  he  was  never  to  carry  much 
further,  has  a  place  of  honour  in  the  history  of  English  aesthetic; 
and  it  was  produced,  like  Burke's  book  on  the  Sublime  and 
Beautiful,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven.  The  arrangement  is 
over -scholastic,  especially  in  the  chapters  on  the  'theoretic,' 
which  Ruskin,  in  his  Platonic  way,  steadily  refused  to  call  the 
'  aesthetic,'  faculty  ;  the  types  of  sundry  divine  qualities,  such 
as  '  unity,'  '  purity,'  and  '  infinity,'  have  no  true  logical  prin- 
ciple of  division  ;  and  the  insistence  on  the  religious  symbolism 
which  is  to  be  extracted  from  natural  objects  amounts  to  a 
fixed  idea.  But  the  essay  on  the  different  types  of  imagina- 
tion, '  associative,'  '  penetrative,'  and  '  contemplative,'  is  one 
of  the  most  satisfactory  in  the  language.  In  passing,  Ruskin 
illuminates  the  poets  ;  he  quotes  from  Dante,  Spenser  (a  fellow- 
Platonist),  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Scott,  Wordsworth,  and 
Shelley.  The  comments  upon  Dante's  flames,  upon  Words- 
worth's fraternal  yew-trees,  and  upon  Shakespeare's '  imagination 
penetrative  '  ('  How  did  Shakespeare  know  that  Virgilia  could 
not  speak  ?  '),  show  that  Ruskin  himself  has  the  kind  of 
imagination  he  describes ;  and  no  one  can  be  the  same  after 
having  once  read  them.  And  the  other  passages,  the  great 
coloured  ones  that  get  into  the  anthologies,  like  those  on  the 
Soldanella  flower,  on  Turner's  dragon,  on  Tintoret 's  Last  Judge- 
ment, and  on  Perugino's  Michael,  are  not  mere  patches,  but 
arise  out  of  the  argument,  and  are  examples,  themselves,  of 
veracity  working  under  the  law  of  the  imagination,  with  that 
faculty  at  full  stretch. 


in 

The  writings  of  Ruskin  down  to  1860  can  be  regarded, 
despite  their  variety  of  matter  and  their  connexion  with  those 
that  follow,  as  forming  a  single  group.  The  bibliography  2 
hides  the  real  assortment  of  the  topics.  For  Modern  Painters 
appeared  in  five  volumes,  covering  seventeen  years ;  in  1843, 
1846,  1856  (vols.  iii.  and  iv.),  and  1860.     It  embraces  six  or 


WORKS  TO  1860  223 

seven  distinct  compositions,  each  of  them  being  scattered 
through  various  volumes  ;  and  Ruskin's  subsequent  endeavours 
to  sift  out  and  reorder  the  material  were  incomplete,  while  the 
first  two  volumes  he  largely  revised.  Moreover,  Modern 
Painters  was  interrupted  by  two  other  books  which  grew  out  of 
it,  namely  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  (1849),  and  The 
Stones  of  Venice  ;  of  which  the  first  volume  appeared  in  1851, 
the  second  and  third  in  1853.  And  there  is  an  array  of  lesser 
works,  mostly  produced  after  1850,  to  add  :  reviews,  letters 
to  the  press  on  art  and  politics  ;  the  so-called  Notes  on  the 
Construction  of  Sheepfolds,  of  which  more  hereafter,  and  which 
disappointed  both  farmers  and  clergymen  ;  many  catalogues 
and  observations  dealing  with  Turner  ;  and  a  series  of  Notes  on 
the  Royal  Academy,  eloquent  or  biting,  an  ensample  of  what  is 
called  art  journalism.  More  substantial  is  the  pamphlet  called 
Pre-Raphaelitism,  which  in  1851  brought  timely  succour  to 
Millais  and  his  friends  ;  who,  after  Turner  and  Tintoret,  were 
Ruskin's  third  great  discovery,  and  whom  he  upheld  and 
chastened  to  the  last.  He  also  produced  a  very  popular  manual 
on  The  Elements  of  Drawing  (1857)  and  a  harder  one  on  The 
Elements  of  Perspective.  Of  wider  scope  are  the  Edinburgh 
Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting  (1854),  a  lucid  summary 
of  his  earlier  gospel ;  and  The  Two  Paths  (1859),  also  lectures 
consummate  in  arrangement  and  expression  and  setting  forth 
one  of  his  chief  articles  of  faith,  namely  that  all  high  design 
in  sculpture  and  painting  depends  on  the  observance  of  the 
forms  of  organic  nature. 

Towards  1860  there  are  many  signs  of  the  change  of  emphasis, 
to  which  I  have  referred,  in  Ruskin's  interests.  It  intrudes 
into  the  last  volume  of  Modern  Painters  ;  and  still  more  pro- 
phetic are  the  Manchester  discourses  of  1857  on  The  Political 
Economy  of  Art,  in  which  the  faiths  and  frays  of  the  following 
decade  are  seen  to  be  taking  shape,  and  which  was  afterwards 
augmented  and  named,  significantly  enough,  '  A  Joy  for  Ever  ' 
(and  its  Price  in  the  Market)  (1880).  Out  of  all  this  output  it  is 
not  easy  to  wash  the  gold.  A  note  on  some  of  the  major  works, 
and  on  some  features  of  Ruskin's  mind  and  creed,  must  here 
suffice.  Of  his  many  practical  doings,  in  connexion  with  the 
Oxford  Museum,  the  Working  Men's  College,  and  the  Turner 
collection,  his  biographer  gives  an  admirable  account.  The 
parable  of  the  sower  might  have  been  written  of  Ruskin.  The 
Turner  Gallery,  which  he  did  not  live  to  enter,  is  perhaps,  amongst 
things  that  can  be  seen,  the  principal  fruit  of  his  labours. 


224  JOHN  RUSKIN 

IV 

The  Seven  Lamps,  which  grew  out  of  notes  made  for  Modern 
Painters,  may  be  regarded  either  as  a  side-chapel  to  that  great 
irregular  edifice,  or  as  a  portal  to  a  much  more  symmetrical 
and  finished  one,  The  Stones  of  Venice.  It  is  Ruskin's  first 
essay  in  vindication  of  Gothic.  The  names  of  the  lamps,  which 
he  managed  with  some  trouble  to  limit  to  the  mystic  seven, 
express  the  sacred  principles  which  he  considered  to  preside 
over  this,  the  noblest  sort  of  architecture.  And  the  lamps 
really  do  give  fight  ;  for  in  this,  beyond  all  the  other  arts,  it 
is  least  unfair  to  trace  a  direct  relationship  between  the  artistic 
result  and  the  moral  qualities,  not  only  of  the  designer  and 
workman,  but  also  of  the  society  that  produces  and  employs 
them.  The  lamp  of  Sacrifice  prompts  men  to  spend  freely, 
beyond  what  is  needed  for  mere  use,  and  for  the  sake  of  noble 
effect,  upon  costly  materials  and  ample  spaces.  The  lamp  of 
Truth  forbids  all  kinds  of  deception  like  the  marbling  of  wood 
or  the  use  of  machine-made  ornament.  The  lamp  of  JVlemory 
enjoins  the  preservation  of  good  or  great  ancient  buildings, 
and  forbids  the  '  restoration  '  of  them.  The  lamp  of  Beauty 
shows  us  that  in  ornamentation  and  design  all  the  '  most  lovely 
forms  and  thoughts  are  directly  taken  from  natural  objects.' 
The  significance  of  the  lamps  ofJPower  and__Life  is  less  distinct ; 
and  the  lamp  of  Obedience,  more  questionably,  warns  us,  as 
Ruskin  did  all  his  days,  against  the  '  pursuit  of  that  treacherous 
phantom  which  men  call  Liberty.'  The  book  has  been  a  living 
influence,  and  has  affected  actual  architecture,  as  well  as 
triumphantly  interpreting  the  Gothic  ideal.  It  is  based  on 
laborious  study  ;  Ruskin's  own  drawings  complete  its  value, 
and  we  may  wonder  whether  they  will  not  outlive  many  of  his 
sermons.  There  remains  a  touch  of  immature  didacticism  in 
the  style  of  The  Seven  Lamps,  but  it  is  one  of  Ruskin's  clearest 
and  most  orderly  books.  Some  of  its  pages  foreshadow  the 
transference  of  his  interest  from  the  work  of  art  to  the  condi- 
tion, in  mind,  body,  and  estate,  of  the  individual  workman : 
'  Was  the  carver  happy  while  he  was  about  it  ? ' 

Much  of  The  Stones  of  Venice  comes  near  to  the  ordinary 
forms  of  scholarly  exposition  for  which,  when  he  chose,  Ruskin 
displayed  a  real  genius.  Many  chapters  are  filled  with  close 
technical  analysis,  which  was  the  fruit  of  immense  toil  con- 
ducted on  the  spot,  often  hidden  or  suppressed,  like  that  of  the 
workmen  in  the  churches  which  he  describes.  But  there  is 
also  a  far-reaching  statement  of  principle.    The  famed  chapter 


GOTHIC  225 

on  the  nature  of  Gothic  is  in  organic  connexion  with  the  rest 
of  the  book,  and  with  Ruskin's  lifelong  creed.  It  was  joyously 
declaimed,  as  a  confession  of  faith,  by  some  of  the  '  Pre- 
Raphaelites.'  It  was  reprinted  separately  for  working  men. 
It  was,  essentially,  a  reasoned  vindication  of  the  great  mediaeval 
revival,  which  for  a  whole  century  had  been  inspiring  creative 
work  in  poetry,  in  prose,  in  painting,  and  in  building,  but  which 
had  never  given  a  very  articulate  account  of  itself,  although  the 
word  Gothic  had  long  ceased  to  be  derogatory.  But  now  all 
future  champions  of  Gothic  must  start,  if  only  they  can,  where 
Ruskin  left  off.  He  gives  much  less  space  to  its  external  or 
material  forms  than  to  the  nature  of  its  '  mental  expression,' 
which  is  analysed  under  many  headings.  Not  all  of  these  are 
equally  apt,  but  all  are  suggestive.  Under  '  changefulness  ' 
is  demonstrated  the  principle  of  infinite  life  and  variety  that 
quickens  Gothic  arch  and  tracery.  In  the  section  on  the 
grotesque,  a  subject  expanded  afterwards  in  Modem  Painters, 
Ruskin  works  his  way  into  the  problem,  which  for  such  an 
idealist  as  himself  is  the  most  searching  of  all ;  namely  what 
feelings  of  pathos,  or  oddity,  or  strangeness  may  rightfully, 
though  with  an  apparent  effect  of  discord,  modify  the  expres- 
sion of  beauty.  Many  things  that  are  good  he  shrinks  from 
admiring  ;  but  no  one  has  yet  probed  further  into  the  question. 
Perhaps  the  most  enlightening  section  is  that  on  '  naturalism,' 
a  term  which  Ruskin  uses  not  in  its  later  sense,  but  as  a 
middle  one  between  the  '  purism,'  like  the  art  of  Perugino  or 
Stothard,  which  represents  only  what  is  perfectly  good  or 
pure,  and  'sensualism  which  perceives  and  imitates  evil  only.' 
The  naturalists,  he  says,  the  '  second  or  greatest  class,' 

render  all  that  they  see  in  nature  unhesitatingly,  yet  with  a  kind  of 
divine  grasp  or  government  of  the  whole  ;  sympathising  with  all  the 
good,  and  yet  confessing,  permitting,  and  bringing  good  out  of  the 
evil  also.  Their  subject  is  as  infinite  as  nature,  their  colour  equally 
balanced  between  splendour  and  sadness,  reaching  occasionally  the 
highest  degrees  of  both,  and  their  chiaroscuro  equally  balanced 
between  light  and  shade. 

This  subject  is  resumed  in  the  third  volume  of  Modern  Painters, 
and  '  naturalism  '  seems  to  imply  a  perfect  balance  between 
the  idealising  spirit  and  the  recording  gift. 


The  main  text  of  The  Stones  of  Venice  is  not  simply^lhe 
supremacy  of  Gothic  art,  but  the  wider  one  that  art,  and  archi- 
-vol.  i.  r- — 


226  JOHN  RUSKIN 

tecturejn  pn.rt.ipn1n.Vj  is-iiiA-iwwfr-sfmflit,ivf>  index  of  -the_moral 
goodness  and  greatness  of  a  people .  '  The  rise  and  fall  of 
Venetian  Gothic  art  depends  on  the  moral  or  immoral  temper 
of  the  state.'  It  is  usually  admitted  that  Ruskin  established 
the  connexion,  or  at  least  the  coincidence,  of  the  moral  and 
artistic  phenomena,  in  the  case  of  Venice.  In  this  light  he 
traces  the  development  of  the  Gothic  from  the  Byzantine  style, 
and  its  decline  into  that  of  the  Renaissance,  with  wonderful 
clearness,  for  the  lay  as  well  as  the  learned  reader.  More 
questionably,  he  extends  his  principle  to  the  history  of  art  at 

large. 

This,  however,  is  one  of  the  instances  in  which  Ruskin's  way, 
already  noted,  of  taking  an  intellectual  short  cut  spoils  his 
case  and  conceals  the  element  of  truth  which  it  contains.  He 
tries  to  make  out  that  art  is  a  '  function,'  in  the  scientific  sense, 
of  national  morality,  varying  in  excellence  along  with  it. 
He  often  had  to  meet,  and  never  seems  to  have  met,  the  retort 
that  much  good  and  even  noble  art  has  arisen  among  nations, 
and  during  periods,  which  cannot  be  credited  with  special 
elevation  or  purity  of  morals.  The  Athens  of  Phidias,  the 
Italy  of  Leonardo,  and  the  England  of  Wren  have  little 
right,  on  his  showing,  to  produce  what  in  fact  they  did  pro- 
duce. The  retort,  however,  does  not  dispose  of  Ruskin's 
principle,  but  only  shows  that  his  calculus  is  much  too  simple. 
An  '  age  '  is  not  all  of  a  piece  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  for  example,  appearing  in  the  time  of  Wycherley,  is  a 
work  of  art,  which  speaks  for  the  deeper  and  unspoilt  elements 
in  the  society  of  the  Restoration.  Ruskin  liked  to  read  a  little 
Plato  every  day  ;  and  if  we  think  of  the  servile  basis,  and  of 
the  sexual  code,  of  the  community  from  which  the  Dialogues 
emerged,  apparently  like  flowers  from  a  dunghill,  the  proposi- 
tion that  art  is  a  function  of  national  morality  will  be  seen  to 
be  neither  wholly  true  nor  wholly  idle.  An  art  like  that  of 
Balzac,  which  portrays  the  whole  of  a  society  in  its  heights 
and  depths,  presents  yet  other  riddles,  for  which  Ruskin's 
canon  is  inadequate.  In  such  cases  there  is  nothing  for  it  but 
an  intricate,  and  above  all  a  disinterested,  analysis  ;  the  question 
cannot  be  solved  by  a  rush. 

Ruskin's  strength  and  weakness  are  fully  displayed  in  The 
Stones  of  Venice.  The  rigmarole  in  the  third  volume  against 
the  '  poison-tree  '  of  the  Renaissance,  especially  in  its  later 
developments,  such  as  the  '  pride  of  science,'  the  '  pride  of 
system,'  '  infidelity,'  and  the  rest,  is  all  the  more  melancholy 
reading,  because  Ruskin  pounces  on  some  genuine  defects,  but 


ANTI-RENAISSANCE— MODERN  PAINTERS,  III    227 

sees  them  in  lurid  disproportion.  And  his  attack  widens  far 
beyond  its  original  reference  to  the  history  of  architecture ; 
and  much  of  his  abuse  of  modern  civilisation  seems  to  be 
rooted  in  the  primary  absurdity  of  thinking  that  the  Renais- 
sance came  on  the  whole  to  be  a  bad  thing,  and  to  mark  a  step 
backwards  for  the  human  spirit.  It  is  needless  to  dwell  upon 
the  blindness  to  the  whole  later  course  of  mental  and  moral 
history  that  this  prejudice,  partly  sectarian  or  pietistic  in  its 
origin,  involves.  It  is  the  price  that  Ruskin  pays  for  his  great 
achievement,  which  is  also  his  inalienable  glory  ;  namely  to 
have  revealed  in  a  new  light  the  greatness  of  the  ages  of  faith, 
which  culminate  in  the  Divine  Comedy  and  in  the  best  Gothic. 
About  the  earlier  Renaissance  he  says  much  that  is  true  and 
illuminating  ;  he  guards  himself  against  the  charge  of  ever 
slighting  for  a  moment  the  work  of  Leonardo  and  his  com- 
panions ;  and  he  shows  a  deep  sympathy  with  Spenser,  or  at 
least  with  the  Platonic  and  mediaeval  sides  of  that  poet's 
imagination.  Any  true  artist  whose  genius  is  of  the  symbolic 
or  allegorical  cast  is  pretty  sure  of  Ruskin 's  homage.  Nothing 
is  better  than  his  distinction  between  personification  and  sym- 
bolism, or  his  comparison  of  Spenser's  emblematic  method  with 
that  of  the  painters  and  sculptors,  or  his  passing  touches  of 
moral  analysis.  Much  of  this  matter  is  to  be  found  in  the 
chapter  on  the  '  Ducal  Palace,'  which  Ruskin  justly  calls  '  one 
of  the  most  important  pieces  of  work  done  in  my  fife.'  There 
are  many  other  things  of  price  in  the  book,  like  the  prose  hymn  to 
colour,  which  preceded  Meredith's  poem  (1888)  by  a  generation. 

VI 

The  third  volume  of  Modern  Painters,  well  entitled  '  Of  many 
Things,'  recurs  to  some  of  the  old  problems  in  the  light  of  ten 
years'  further  experience.  The  'ideals  '  of  '  naturalism  '  and 
of  the  '  grotesque  '  are  re -described.  The  nature  of  the  'grand 
style  '  is  expounded  at  length  ;  the  conditions  of  its  appearance 
being  nobility  of  subject,  love  of  beauty,  and  sincerity  of  treat- 
ment ;  though  what,  after  all,  the  grand  style  may  be  is  less 
apparent.  It  is  not  bound  down  to  minute  particulars,  and 
yet  it  does  not  reject  them  ;  how  far  it  shall  enlist  them  must 
depend  on  the  occasion.  The  true  test  is  to  ask  how  far  the 
imagination  is  actively  at  work  upon  the  particulars.  One  of 
Ruskin's  best  chapters  is  that  upon  '  Finish,'  true  and  false ; 
and  true  finish  is  defined,  most  pertinently,  as  '  the  complete- 
ness of  the  expression  of  the  idea,'  and,  simpler  still,  as  '  telling 


228  JOHN  RUSKTN 

more  truth.'  The  same  principle  is  applied  to  the  problem 
which  had  always  vexed  Ruskin  (and  indeed  it  is  a  funda- 
mental one),  namely  how  far  the  artist's  imagination  is  to  be 
bound  by  things  seen,  as  they  are  seen  ;  in  fact,  what  is  the 
law  guiding  his  selecting,  rejecting,  and  combining  power. 
Ruskin  had  praised  Turner  and  Tintoret  for  free  creative 
genius,  and  the  '  Pre-Raphaelites  '  and  Diirer  for  rigorous 
observance  of  fact,  and  he  sought  some  elastic  formula  that 
should  cover  all  such  cases.  Again  and  again  he  seems  on  the 
verge  of  stating  what  would  now  be  called  the  purely  '  artistic  ' 
canon,  which  first  and  foremost  judges  the  excellence  of  the 
handiwork  as  an  expression  of  the  artist's  idea  or  subject. 
In  his  third  chapter  he  reviews  the  relationship  of  technique 
to  theme  and  expression.  But  he  is  soon  off  again  in  search 
of  one  or  other  of  his  spiritual  '  lamps  '  ;  and,  with  all  his 
disclaimers,  he  is  ever  prone  to  judge  the  work  of  art  rather 
by  the  high  feeling  which  its  topic,  or  its  conception,  maj^ 
arouse  than  by  the  actual  performance. 

A  long  section  of  this  volume  (chaps,  xi.-xvii.)  contains  one 
of  Ruskin's  most  delightful,  coherent,  and  trustworthy  studies  ; 
all  the  more  trustworthy,  that  he  is  here  safe  on  his  own  terri- 
tory of  rock,  and  valley,  and  lowland.  He  sketches,  at  its 
salient  points,  the  sentiment  of  landscape  in  poetry  and  art — 
but  at  first  more  fully  in  poetry — from  Homer  down  to  Turner. 
He  draws  chiefly  on  Homer  for  antiquity,  and  on  Dante  for 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  on  Scott  and  Wordsworth  amongst  recent 
poets.  Of  course  there  are  outcries  against  the  Renaissance 
and  modern  life  ;  and  one  chapter,  that  on  the  '  moral  of  land- 
scape,' opens  with  the  question  whether  we  '  may  wisely  boast ' 
of  the  pleasure  which  landscape  gives,  and  may  '  unhesitatingly 
indulge  it.'  But  this  extraordinary  qualm  is  allayed  ;  and 
then  we  are  told,  with  a  delicacy  only  equalled  in  the  Prelude, 
of  Ruskin's  own  nascent  feeling  for  scenery  during  his  child- 
hood. The  penetrating  discussion  of  the  '  pathetic  fallacy  '  is 
equally  well  known  ;  though  it  is  often  forgotten  that,  in 
Ruskin's  view,  the  'fallacy'  does  not  consist  simply  in  imput- 
ing human  feelings  to  natural  objects.  To  the  last  chapter, 
on  '  the  teachers  of  Turner,'  is  appended — such  a  dance  does 
Ruskin  take  his  readers — an  epilogue  on  the  Crimean  war, 
with  a  great  prose  dirge  on  the  soldier-boys  who  had  perished 
in  it ;  and  there  is  also  a  word  of  praise  for  a  certain  '  great 
emperor/  Louis  Napoleon  namely. 

The  fourth  and  fifth  volumes  of  Modern  Painters  (1856,  1860) 
form  together  a  splendid  if  exasperating  medley  which  defies 


MODERN  PAINTERS,  IV -V  229 

any  brief  description.  There  is  always  the  purpose  of  explain- 
ing Turner,  and  of  enforcing  the  '  moral  of  landscape.'  To  this 
the  more  systematic  chapters  are  devoted  ;  and  the  analysis 
of  the  aspect  of  mountain,  tree,  and  cloud,  begun  in  the  first 
volume,  is  resumed,  naturally  with  an  immense  enrichment  of 
material.  This  part  of  the  book  has  been  acclaimed  both  by 
mountaineers  and  by  artists  ;  nor  is  there  much  of  Ruskin's 
writing  that  bids  fair  to  stand  firmer,  or  to  last  longer.  And, 
after  finishing  the  pages  on  'Turnerian  mystery,'  'Turnerian 
topography,'  and  '  Turnerian  light,'  he  might  well  have  said, 
like  Chapman  on  completing  his  Homer, 

The  work  that  I  was  born  to  do  is  done. 

Turner  was  now  to  be  safe  on  his  pillar  in  the  House  of  Fame. 
But  Ruskin's  work,  as  we  shall  see,  was  not  done  ;  in  one 
sense,  he  had  hardly  begun  it.  Prompted  by  his  father,  he 
forced  himself  to  bring  Modern  Painters  to  a  stop  ;  and  it  is 
evident  from  many  signs  that  he  was  preoccupied  with  a 
great  new  campaign,  this  time  in  the  field  of  economics.  But 
these  volumes,  the  fourth  and  fifth,  show  his  thoughts  raying 
out,  in  the  strangest  brilliant  fashion,  to  all  quarters  of  the 
compass. 

Sometimes  there  is  an  historical  thread,  as  in  the  unsympa- 
thetic account  of  the  Dutch  painters.  '  The  Mountain  Gloom  ' 
and  the  '  Mountain  Glory '  describe  the  influence  of  scenery 
upon  national,  and  especially  upon  rustic,  character,  with  the 
sharpest  possible  portrayal  of  the  unhappy  scenes  and  faces 
which  lived  in  Ruskin's  memory.  In  the  chapters  with  poetic 
headings,  '  The  Nereid's  Guard,'  or  '  The  Lance  of  Pallas,'  the 
treatment  is  free  to  the  point  of  incoherence,  and  the  wander- 
ing capricious  style  of  a  later  phase,  that  of  Fors  Clavigera,  is 
foreshadowed.  As  we  near  the  end,  we  never  know  whether 
we  shall  light  on  a  profound  reading  of  a  great  picture,  or  on  a 
gallop  into  etymology  or  mythology,  often  fantastic,  or  upon 
musical  suspiria  lamenting  the  condition  of  lost  and  blackened 
England,  or  on  a  whirl  of  Bible  texts,  or  on  a  passage  of  sober 
and  consecutive  analysis,  like  the  chapter  on  '  Vulgarity,'  which 
is  worthy  of  Plato.  Instead  of  attempting  a  vain  summary,  it 
may  be  convenient  to  halt  at  this  central  point  of  Ruskin's 
life,  and  to  review  quickly,  looking  both  before  and  after,  three 
different  but  connected  aspects  of  his  mind  and  gift.  The  first 
of  these  is  his  temper  towards  religion ;  the  second,  his  ethical 
view  of  art :  and  the  third,  his  position  amidst  his  fellow-masters 
of  the  English  language. 


230  JOHN  RUSKIN 


VII 


Ruskin  was  brought  up  in  an  acrid  sort  of  Evangelical 
Protestantism,  which  he  afterwards  reacted  against  violently, 
trying  to  weed  the  signs  of  it  out  of  the  reprints  of  his  earlier 
books  ;  or,  where  he  could  not  do  that,  to  recant  in  footnotes. 
It  took,  however,  the  form  less  of  insisting  on  the  special 
dogmas  of  the  school  than  of  a  bitter  anti-Romish  sentiment 
which  discoloured  his  view  of  history  and  interrupted  his 
criticism  of  art .  In  the  Notes  on  the  Construction  of  Sheepfolds 
(1851),  his  only  quite  unreadable  volume,  he  dreams,  like 
Leibniz  long  before  him,  of  a  union  of  the  Protestant  Churches  ; 
and  his  dislike  of  the  Anglo  -Catholic  and  Anglo -Roman  move- 
ments is  intensified  by  their  weakness  for  bastard  Gothic.  But 
in  time  he  came  to  ask  himself  the  question  put  by  Matthew 
Arnold  :  '  O  Evangelical  Protestant,  is  thine  own  religion,  then, 
so  true  ?  '  or,  in  his  own  words,  he  perceived  that  he  had  not 
seen  the  absurdity  of  thinking  the  divisions  of  Protestantism 
wrong,  but  '  the  schism  between  Protestant  and  Catholic 
virtuous  and  sublime.'  And  so,  at  any  rate  after  1860,  Ruskin 
comes  to  shed  much  of  his  Protestantism,  though  still  up- 
holding '  the  authority  of  scripture  '  ;  and  yet  to  reduce, 
during  a  long  and  perplexed  interval,  his  actual  tenets  to  a  very 
few,  to  which  he  clings  as  to  a  raft  ;  doing,  withal,  a  kind  of 
despairing  justice  to  the  agnostic  or  secular  school,  whom  he 
sees  beginning  to  prevail'  around  him,  and  appealing  to  it 
(as  in  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive)  in  the  noblest  terms — and  almost 
with  a  momentary  sympathy  ? — to  make  the  most  of  the  one  life 
that  it  was  sure  of,  and  to  back  him  in  his  crusades .  Then  again, 
latterly,  under  the  old  spell  of  the  ages  of  faith  and  their  art, 
Ruskin,  without  any  stiffening  of  dogma,  was  ready  to  call 
himself,  in  the  largest  sense  of  the  term,  a  '  Catholic  '  ;  standing, 
generally  and  as  of  old,  for  '  faith  '  against  '  unfaith,'  which 
he  found  to  be  the  taint  of  the  modern  world  at  large.  This 
is  but  a  rough  chart  of  the  journey  which  led  through  many  a 
winding,  and  in  the  course  of  which  Ruskin  submitted  to  many 
influences.  The  greatest  of  these,  beyond  doubt,  was  that 
of  Carlyle .  In  both  these  thinkers  we  are  at  first  perplexed  by 
the  mixture  of  intense  conservatism  of  temper  with  extreme 
paucity  of  dogma.  Such  eulogists  of  the  times  of  faith  ought, 
we  feel,  to  have  had  more  of  that  commodity  themselves  ;  ought 
not,  along  with  so  many  sons  of  the  new  world  which  they 
revile,  to  have  thrown  over  most  of  the  venerable  consolations. 
But  the  solution  may  be  found  in  the  compensating  intensity 


HIS  CREEDS—  INFLUENCES— '  NOBLENESS  '     231 

with  which  they  held  to  their  primary  tenets  :  to  the  faith  that 
is  in  a  divine  order  of  the  world,  and  (in  Carlyle's  case  at  least) 
in  the  ultimate  might  of  goodness .  Often  their  creed  comes  to 
no  more  than  this,  but  it  seldom  comes  to  less. 

Still  it  is  hard  to  give  a  simple  account  of  the  religion,  or 
religions,  of  Ruskin.  He  was  never  a  mere  Protestant  ;  for 
all  he  might  say,  he  was,  like  Milton,  very  much  a  child  of 
the  Renaissance.  He  would  have  been  very  different  if  the 
manuscripts  of  Plato  had  never  been  discovered.  And  his 
artistic  theory  and  his  religious  creed  interpenetrate.  Often, 
in  his  earlier  works,  he  talks  much  like  a  Christian  Platonist, 
who  sees  in  the  Divine  at  once  the  source  and  the  identifying 
principle,  of  goodness  and  beauty.  This  view  comes  out 
plainest  in  the  second  volume  of  Modem  Painters.  And  there 
is  an  odd  seasoning,  as  of  Paley,  in  Ruskin's  blending  of  Plato 
and  Spenser  with  the  Bible  ;  there  is  an  emphasis  on  the  pres- 
ence of  design  in  nature,  but  a  transfer  of  that  emphasis  from 
utility  to  beauty.  For  beautiful  natural  forms,  in  their  per- 
fection, are  made  for  us  to  love,  admire,  and  live  by  ;  so  that 
the  main  or  ultimate  function  of  art,  in  representing  them, 
comes  at  once  into  sight.  Ruskin  never  swerved  from  this 
point  of  view,  though  he  elaborates  it  in  many  ways .  Whatever 
we  think  of  it,  the  point  for  remark  is  that  he  never  suffers  it, 
for  any  edifying  purpose,  to  warp  his  actual  record  of  natural 
facts  ;  working  steadily,  in  that  sense,  by  the  light  of  his  own 
*  lamp  of  truth.' 

Ruskin's  tendency  to  take  an  ethical  view  of  art  is  the  best- 
known  and  most  obvious  feature  of  his  writings  ;  and  also, 
some  would  say,  the  most  obsolete  one.  The  identity  of  the 
great  triad,  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness,  is  not  a  thing  that  he 
tries  to  prove  ;  he  assumes,  applies,  and  illustrates  it.  This 
immense  jump  of  his,  from  beauty  to  morals,  over  chasms  by 
Ruskin  unperceived,  can  escape  no  reader.  It  never  gives  him 
the  least  trouble,  and  he  bridges  it  over,  or  covers  it  up  very 
considerably,  in  Platonic  fashion,  by  his  use  of  the  word  noble, 
good  and  fair,  «aX6? ;  noble  is  perhaps  the  commonest  epithet 
in  his  writings,  as  well  as  the  truest  and  most  comprehensive 
one  that  can  be  applied  to  them.  There  is  little  doubt  that  his 
constant  straining  of  this  term,  which  led  him  to  find  '  ethics  ' 
in  the  '  dust,'  and  '  temperance  and  intemperance  in  curvature,' 
and  sermons,  not  only  in  the  stones  of  Venice,  but  in  those  of 
the  field,  had  its  share  in  provoking  the  revulsion,  which 
becomes  so  marked  towards  the  end  of  the  century,  against  the 
notion  of  building,  between  art   and  ethics,  any  particular 


232  JOHN  RUSKIN 

bridge  at  all.  And  certainly,  if  we  followed  Ruskin,  we  should 
cut  ourselves  off  from  the  appreciation  of  many  good  artists 
and  writers,  simply  because  of  his  driving  of  an  undeniable 
truth  too  far,  and  because  his  conception  of  '  nobility,'  after  all, 
is  not  a  perfectly  catholic  one  ;  leading  him,  as  it  does,  to  avert 
his  eyes  from  what  may  be  called  great  mixed  art,  or  art  that 
profoundly  expresses  mixed  humanity  ;  or,  to  put  it  in  a  word, 
from  art  as  expression. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  this  question  of  the  relation  of  art 
and  ethics  is  bound  up  with  another  one  of  a  more  purety 
aesthetic  sort,  namely  the  relation  of  the  artist's  subject,  or 
motive,,  to  his  technique  and  execution  ;  and  Ruskin's  position 
here  is  often  misread.  He  is  careful  to  repeat  that  virtue  alone 
cannot  make  any  man  an  artist  or  any  nation  artistic.  A 
mass  of  his  writing,  both  critical  and  pedagogic  (like  The 
Elements  of  Drawing),  is  concerned  purely  with  execution.  He 
has  left  a  great  body  of  judgements  on  particular  painters, 
which  are  entirely  concerned  with  the  way  in  which  they  did 
their  work,  apart  from  the  question  of  their  ulterior  motives. 
He  analyses  Turner's  actual  quality  of  vision,  in  terms  of  line 
and  colour,  at  length,  on  its  own  merits.  And  even  when 
Ruskin  deserts  this  ground,  and  flies  off  to  his  application  and 
his  moral,  that  procedure,  think  of  it  what  we  may,  does  not 
falsify  what  he  has  to  say  on  the  technical  or  executive  side.  I 
repeat  this  point,  because  we  are  thus  able  to  trust  Ruskin 
so  much  more  than  might  have  been  expected  ;  owing,  once 
more,  to  his  fidelity  to  the  '  lamp  of  truth.' 

But  it  is  time  to  speak  of  him,  and  of  his  own  technique  and 
performance,  as  a  writer ;  considering  it  apart,  so  far  as  may 
be,  from  his  ideas,  and  from  what  is  called  his  '  message.' 


vin 

For  the  year  1860  quickened  a  change,  which  had  long  been 
coming,  in  his  style.1  '  The  art  of  language,'  as  he  remarks, '  is 
certainly  one  of  the  fine  arts  '  ;  and  what  kind  of  an  artist,  in 
language,  is  Ruskin  ?  He  had  another  art,  that  of  the  pencil, 
of  which  I  am  not  competent  to  speak  ;  but  it  is  impossible  to 
think  of  his  books  apart  from  the  hundreds  of  examples  of  his 
nice  and  often  exquisite  handiwork.  He  also,  in  early  days, 
wrote  much  verse  which  is  full  of  feeling  and  is  technically 
right,  but  which  leaves  very  little  impression.  In  prose  he 
is,  accurately  speaking,  the  central  figure  of  his  time  :  central, 


HIS  STYLE— THE  BIBLE  233 

because  the  prose  of  Carlyle,  though  greater  in  itself,  and  of 
stronger  fibre,  is  well  away  from  the  centre,  from  the  type  and 
long  tradition,  from  the  English  prose  of  the  past,  the  present, 
and  the  future  ;  while  Ruskin's  in  its  pure  and  classical  quality, 
and  in  the  distinctive  character  of  its  beauty,  is  in  the  full 
stream  of  that  tradition.  The  first  instalments  of  Modern 
Painters  opened,  as  I  have  said,  new  pathways  in  imaginative, 
descriptive,  and  expository  prose.  Landor  and  De  Quincey 
had  still  work  before  them,  but  they  really  belonged  to  the 
previous  age.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  a  very  good,  but  not 
exactly  an  inspired,  writer.  The  novelists,  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  did  not  attempt  the  prose  of  ideas.  Thackeray, 
indeed,  is  one  of  Ruskin's  two  contemporary  rivals  in  the  com- 
mand of  pure,  flowing,  and  incorrupt  English  ;  but  grandeur 
and  splendour  and  prophecy,  not  to  speak  of  intellectual  analysis, 
lie  so  far  from  his  powers  or  purpose  that  the  comparison  cannot 
go  further.  The  other  rival  was  Newman,  who  had  already 
written  much  and  had  preached  his  best  in  St .  Mary's .  Newman, 
in  1843,  was  the  most  delicate  living  master  of  the  prose  in- 
strument ;  and  was  also  a  master,  in  his  own  way,  of  spiritual 
appeal,  though  chiefly  to  those  of  his  own  fold.  But  Ruskin 
from  the  first  had  sympathies  far  wider,  and  a  far  deeper  sense 
of  human  needs,  than  Newman,  and  therefore  a  rarer  moral 
intuition  ;  as  well  as  a  style,  at  first  less  Attic  in  stamp  than 
Newman's,  but  of  incomparably  more  sweep,  and  variety,  and 
greatness  :  a  more  generous  style,  and  altogether  the  voice  of 
a  more  generous  brain.  But  I  am  now  to  speak  of  his  English  ;  l 
and  Ruskin  has  one  of  the  surest  styles  in  our  language . 

Like  Newman's,  it  is  secured,  at  the  very  foundations,  by 
an  intimacy  with  the  Authorised  Version,2  of  which  no  secular 
writer  has  made  fuller  use.  The  mere  quotations  and  refer- 
ences fill  endless  double  columns  in  the  great  Index.  Ruskin 
tells  in  Prmterita  how  the  whole  Bible  was  dinned  into  him 
every  year  by  his  mother  in  his  childhood,  '  hard  names  and 
all.'  Unlike  many  children,  he  was  grateful,  and  read  it  daily 
afterwards.  From  the  Bible  comes  much  of  the  best  of  his 
language  and  cadence  :  it  is  never  far  off  in  his  magic  melodies  ; 
no  other  literary  influence  can  be  compared  with  it.  Nor  any 
mental  influence  ;  for  it  affected  his  whole  temper  towards 
nature,  art,  and  humanity.  It  kept  the  vernacular  part  of  his 
vocabulary  fine  as  well  as  pure.  The  vocabulary  of  a  writer, 
like  Cobbett  is  pure,  but  not  fine  ;  but  Ruskin  appropriates 
both  the  plain  idiom  and  the  poetical  and  imaginative  part 
of  the  scriptural  diction.    Hence,  as  his  biographer  observes, 


234  JOHN  RUSKIN 

it  '  is  ingrained  in  the  texture  of  almost  every  piece  from  his 
pen.'  Not  that  this  influence  is  wholly  for  good.  When  he 
is  angry,  a  text  easily  becomes  a  '  war  substitute  '  for  an  argu- 
ment. There  is  often  an  unpleasant  pulpit  twang.  The 
peroration  is  apt  to  become  a  confused  shower  x  of  quotations, 
and  we  wait  until  it  is  over.  The  end  of  the  lecture  on  '  Work,' 
in  The  Crovm  of  Wild  Olive,  is  a  painful  instance  :  in  contrast 
with  the  pertinent  and  moving  close  of  Unto  This  Last,  one  of 
the  summits  of  Ruskin's  writing,  where  his  vision  of  a  better 
society  on  earth  instinctively  falls  into  high  biblical  speech. 

Naturally,  that  kind  of  speech  does  not  much  colour  his 
working  or  weekday  prose  ;  for  which  should  be  consulted, 
not  the  heightened  or  formal  passages,  but  Ruskin's  ordinary 
letters,  diaries,  private  notes  of  travel  and  things  seen — which 
are  now  accessible  in  plenty — as  well  as  the  level,  connective 
parts  of  his  books.  Take  him  when  he  is  talking  to  himself 
or  to  a  friend,  or  to  the  reader,  without  his  trappings  and  also 
without  his  weapons.     His  books  are  written,  he  tells  us, 

in  honest  English,  of  good  Johnsonian  lineage,  touched  here  and 
there  ■with  colour  of  a  little  finer  or  Elizabethan  quality. 

'  Elizabethan  '  ?  hardly  ;  unless  the  term  is  to  include  a  writer 
like  Jeremy  Taylor,  of  whom  Ruskin  at  times  reminds  us  by 
his  richness  of  bright  or  tender  imagery,  and  also  by  his  early 
excesses  and  over-richness.  'Johnsonian,'  undeniably,  but 
only  when  the  subject  so  demands,  which  often  it  does  not. 
The  following  is  an  average  piece,  chosen  because  it  is  unexcit- 
ing ;  it  is  just  sound,  eighteenth-century,  traveller's  English, 
with  a  little  added  colour  : 

Five  minutes  more,  and  we  are  in  the  upper  room  of  the  little  inn 
at  Mestre,  glad  of  a  moment's  rest  in  shade.  ...  The  view  from  its 
balcony  is  not  cheerful :  a  narrow  street,  with  a  solitary  brick  church 
and  barren  campanile  on  the  other  side  of  it ;  and  some  conventual 
buildings,  with  a  few  crimson  remnants  of  fresco  about  their  win- 
dows ;  and,  between  them  and  the  street,  a  ditch  with  some  slow 
current  in  it,  and  one  or  two  small  houses  beside  it,  one  with  an  arbour 
of  roses  at  its  door,  as  in  an  English  tea-garden  ;  the  air,  however, 
about  us  having  in  it  nothing  of  roses,  but  a  close  smell  of  garlic 
and  crabs,  warmed  by  the  smoke  of  various  stands  of  hot  chestnut. 
There  is  much  vociferation  also  going  on  beneath  the  window 
respecting  certain  wheelbarrows  which  are  in  rivalry  for  our  baggage  ; 
we  appease  their  rivalry  with  our  best  patience,  and  follow  them 
down  the  narrow  street. 

But  turn  from  this  to  an  expression  of  critical  judgement,  in 


DECORATIONS— SENTENCE  BUILDING  235 

which  the  sentences  are  not  long,  but  where  the  clauses  are 
poised  into  antithetic  pairs,  after  Johnson's  manner,  though 
less  ponderously,  and  with  a  less  formal  tune  ;  and  remember 
that  Ruskin  took  The  Idler  with  him  on  some  of  his  early 
travels  : 

Salvator  possessed  real  genius,  but  was  crushed  by  misery  in  his 
youth,  and  by  fashionable  society  in  his  age.  He  had  vigorous 
animal  life,  and  considerable  invention,  but  no  depth  either  of 
thought  or  perception.  He  took  some  hints  directly  from  nature, 
and  expressed  some  conditions  of  the  grotesque  of  terror  with  original 
power  ;  but  his  baseness  of  thought,  and  bluntness  of  sight,  were 
unconquerable  ;  and  his  works  possess  no  value  whatsoever  for  any 
person  versed  in  the  walks  of  noble  art. 

This  habit  of  doubling  and  balancing  remains  to  the  last, 
though  it  is  more  marked  during  Ruskin's  earlier,  oratorical 
period.  It  is  of  great  value  to  his  longer,  more  magnificent 
sentences  of  description  ;  the  antithesis  gives  something  for 
mind  and  ear  to  rest  upon,  amid  the  rush  of  imagery,  and  then 
it  starts  the  rhythm  again,  with  a  strong-winged  beat,  upon  its 
journey  towards  a  distant  close.  These  complex  harmonies 
recall  De  Quincey  rather  than  Johnson  ;  but  the  secret  of  them 
is  Ruskin's  own .  This  statement  may  sound  somewhat  abstract , 
but  an  illustration  should  bring  it  home  to  the  reader  : 


'o 


Let  us  watch  him  with  reverence  as  he  sets  side  by  side  the  burn- 
ing gems,  and  smooths  with  soft  sculpture  the  jasper  pillars,  that 
are  to  reflect  a  ceaseless  sunshine,  and  rise  info  a  cloudless  sky  ;  but 
not  with  less  reverence  let  us  stand  by  him,  when,  with  rough  strength 
and  hurried  stroke,  he  smites  an  uncouth  animation  out  of  the  rocks 
which  he  has  torn  from  among  the  moss  of  the  moorland,  and 
heaves  into  the  darkened  air  the  pile  of  iron  buttress  and  rugged  wall, 
instinct  with  the  work  of  an  imagination  as  wild  and  wayward  as 
the  northern  sea  ;  creations  of  ungainly  sluipe  and  rigid  limb,  but 
full  of  wolfish  life  ;  fierce  as  the  winds  that  beat,  and  cJvangeful  as 
the  clouds  that  shade  them. 


TX 

But  Ruskin  becomes  more  sparing  of  this  device  of  mechanism ; 
nor  is  that  sentence  an  example  of  the  manner  into  which  he 
came  to  settle,  when  employing  the  long-breathed  sentence. 
The  temporary  and  avowed  imitation  of  Hooker,  in  the  second 
volume  of  Modern  Painters,  mostly  disappears,  and  the  whole 
effect  becomes  less  Latinised.  His  '  period  '  more  commonly 
is  not  a  period  at  all  in  the  sense  of  the  grammarian  ;  not,  that 


236  JOHN  RUSKIN 

is,  a  complex  sentence  which  is  technically  incomplete  in  syntax 
till  its  last  word  is  written.  Ruskin  adopts  a  freer  style.  To 
speak  in  school  terms,  the  main  clause  prolongs  itself,  not  by  a 
chain  of  dependent  clauses,  but  by  a  series  of  absolute,  or  other- 
wise supplementary  ones,  loosely  though  quite  correctly  hung  ; 
thought  giving  birth  to  thought,  and  image  to  fiery  image, 
with  much  the  same  air  of  inevitable  afterthought  as  in  Shake- 
speare's poetry,  for  just  so  long  as  the  matter  may  demand  : 

Far  up  the  glen,  as  we  pause  beside  the  cross,  the  sky  is  seen 
through  the  openings  in  the  pines,  thin  with  excess  of  light  ;  and, 
in  its  clear,  consuming  flame  of  white  space,  the  summits  of  the 
rocky  mountains  are  gathered  into  solemn  crowns  and  circlets,  all 
flushed  in  that  strange,  faint  silence  of  possession  by  the  sunshine 
which  has  in  it  so  deep  a  melancholy  ;  full  of  power,  yet  as  frail 
as  shadows  ;  lifeless,  like  the  walls  of  a  sepulchre,  yet  beautiful  in 
tender  fall  of  crimson  folds,  like  the  veil  of  some  sea  spirit,  that 
lives  and  dies  as  the  foam  flashes,  fixed  on  a  perpetual  throne,  stern 
against  all  strength,  and  yet  effaced  and  melted  utterly  into  the  air 
by  that  last  sunbeam  that  has  crossed  to  them  from  between  the  two 
golden  clouds. 

It  is  a  dangerous  way  of  writing.  Some  of  Ruskin's  sen- 
tences sprawl  gigantically,  in  a  seventeenth -century  fashion. 
But  he  usually  stops  in  time,  and  then  there  are  no  harmonies 
like  his.  To  scan  his  prose  brings  out  its  beauty,  but  the 
subject  is  too  technical  to  elaborate  here.  Some  have  blamed 
him,  and  others  more  justly  have  defended  him,  for  admitting 
so  many  lines  of  blank  verse,  so  much  iambic  movement,  into 
his  sentences.  The  defence  is  that  this  feature  is  not  so  easy 
to  notice,  and  that  it  does  not  sensibly  impair  the  character 
of  the  prose  rhythm.  Still,  I  think  that  in  his  earlier  books 
Ruskin  sometimes  overdoes  the  iambic,  which  forces  itself  upon 
the  ear  :  a  peril  that  may  be  judged  from  those  portions  of  the 
last  two  quotations  which  I  have  italicised.  His  cadence,  in 
its  full  perfection,  eschews  this  tune.  A  passage  from  Fors 
will  show  that  he  could  not  only  recover  but  even  better  his 
earlier  music  ;  and  the  fall  of  the  last  ten  words  is  incomparable, 
quite  effacing  the  faint  impression  of  metre  which  is  twice  left 
by  the  preceding  clauses — I  will  leave  the  reader  to  discover 
where  : 

Between  the  shafts  of  the  pillars,  the  morning  sky  is  seen  pure 
and  pale,  relieving  the  grey  dome  of  the  Church  of  the  Salute  ; 
but  beside  that  vault,  and  like  it,  vast  thunderclouds  heap  them- 
selves above  the  horizon,  catching  the  light  of  dawn  upon  them 
where  they  rise,  far  westward,  over  the  dark  roofs  of  the  ruined 


MUSIC— STYLE-CRAFT  237 

Badia  ; — but  all  so  massive,  that,  half  an  hour  ago,  in  the  dawn, 
I  scarcely  knew  the  Salute  dome  and  towers  from  theirs  :  while  the 
seagulls,  rising  and  falling  hither  and  thither  in  clusters  above  the 
green  water  beyond  the  balcony,  tell  me  that  the  south  wind  is  wild 
on  Adria.1 

Similar  gifts,  but  other  harmonies,  are  to  be  found  in  Ruskin's 
philosophical  and  critical  prose.  Here  too  he  is  a  master  of 
form,  but  he  uses — sometimes  with  his  Plato  in  his  ears,  and 
sometimes  with  Dr.  Johnson — the  more  regular  build  of  classical 
complex  sentence,  longer  or  shorter.  Thus  he  has  a  Greek 
manner,  a  Latin  manner,  a  Tayloresque  manner,  a  scriptural 
manner,  and  finally  his  own  manner  ;  which  comes  out  much 
plainer  after  I860',  but  which  often  emerges  before  that  date, 
and  about  which  he  has  a  good  deal  to  tell  us.  He  wrote  with 
toil,  and  revised  incessantly,  and  played  the  schoolmaster  to 
his  own  books,  when  he  reissued  them,  with  a  severity  that 
leaves  little  to  be  added.  He  liked  to  blow  away  all  surplus 
dust  of  words,  and  at  the  same  time  to  avoid  '  affected  concise- 
ness.' The  changes  in  his  text  are  of  much  interest,  and  are 
usually  inspired  by  one  or  other  of  these  purposes,  or  else  by 
the  instinct  which  he  describes  most  happily  : 

The  constant  habit  to  which  I  owe  my  (often  foolishly-praised) 
'  command  of  language  ' — of  never  allowing  a  sentence  to  pass 
proof,  in  which  I  have  not  considered  whether,  for  the  vital  word 
of  it,  a  better  could  be  found  in  the  dictionary — makes  me  somewhat 
morbidly  intolerant  of  careless  diction. 

In  one  passage,  he  first  wrote  the  words  the  golden  honour  of 
the  sunset.  This  was  unprecise  ;  and  he  next  wrote  the  bright 
investiture  and  golden  honour  of  the  sunset.  Then  he  got  rid  of 
the  original  phrase,  keeping  the  new  one,  and  added  to  that 
another,  so  rendering  an  exact  sensation,  and  finding  the 
'  vital  word  '  of  the  whole  ;  which  at  last  ran,  the  bright  in- 
vestiture and  sweet  warmth  of  the  sunset.  The  more  Ruskin's 
'  eloquent '  descriptions  are  examined,  the  more  they  are  seen 
to  have  this  stamp  of  fidelity  :  a  merit  that  is  often  hidden, 
in  his  earlier  work,  by  a  certain  excess  of  rhetorical  device  and 
over-conscious  skill.  At  the  same  time  the  effect  is  spontaneous  ; 
there  is  not  that  laborious  inlaying  of  words,  which  is  practised 
by  writers  like  Pater,  beautifully  enough,  yet  with  the  result 
of  delaying  the  ease  and  march  of  the  sentence.  The  pace  is 
naturally  slower  in  later  works  like  The  Cestus  of  Aglaia,  with 
their  surprising  fretwork  of  allusion  and  wild  abruptness  of 
transition.    But  it  is  time  to  notice  some  of  the  changes 


238  JOHN  RUSKIN 

produced  in  Ruskin's  use  of  English  by  the  new  warfare  which 
he  took  up,  and  by  the  stresses  and  troubles  of  his  second  half 
of  life. 

X 

He  is  always  complaining  that  people  praise  his  language  and 
adm.r  that  he  can  write,  while  they  do  not  care  for  what  he  says 
or  believe  his  report.  He  came  to  condemn,  with  gentle  irony, 
his  '  customary  burst  of  terminal  eloquence,'  and  he  was  minded 
to  s^et  rid  of  any  such  obstacles  between  himself  and  his  reader. 
And  so,  in  1868,  he  wrote  :  '  Whatever  I  am  now  able  to  say  at 
all,  I  find  myself  forced  to  say  with  great  plainness.'  To  pink 
the  fallacies  of  the  popular  political  economy  effectively,  he 
needed  great  precision  of  fence,  and  an  unencumbered  fighting 
style.  '  Plain,'  however,  is  hardly  the  epithet  for  Unto  This 
Last,  where  the  language,  though  free  from  obscurity,  is  by 
no  means  devoid  of  ornament.  There  is  little  of  the  old  formal 
pomp,  of  the  brocading  that  stiffened  the  fall  of  the  drapery 
and  sometimes  distracted  the  reader's  attention.  The  long 
sentence,  the  balanced  epigram,  the  tone  of  passionate  appeal, 
are  all  present.  But  the  thrusts  have  become  sharp,  brief, 
and  rapid  ;  Ruskin  had  often  hit  hard  before,  but  his  sheer 
English  had  never  been  so  dangerous.  In  Munera  Pulveris,  a 
little  later,  the  primary  aim  is  an  Euclidian  statement  of 
definitions  ;  the  tone  is  sober,  even  formal,  and  the  neatness 
and  fineness  of  outline  may  remind  us,  not  too  fancifully,  of 
Ruskin's  own  drawings .  Many  of  his  other  books  are  addresses 
or  professorial  lectures  ;  and  here  he  shows  all  the  arts  of  the 
teacher,  '  feeling  the  mouth  '  of  the  audience,  laying  out  the 
matter  ingeniously,  and  holding  the  attention  by  jest  and  inter- 
lude, and  by  various  and  amusing  stagecraft ;  the  language 
itself  being  studiously  lucid,  and  the  eloquent  digressions  as 
studiously  prepared.  So  it  is  in  the  discourses  on  birds  or 
flowers,  or  on  wood  and  metal  engraving,  or  in  the  manuals 
made  for  the  tourist  in  Italy.  Few  but  those  who  have  tried 
to  teach  can  appreciate  the  Tightness  of  Ruskin's  diction  in  all 
this  kind  of  work ;  and  no  one  can  be  so  consecutive  when  he 
will. 

But  often,  in  his  later  writings,  he  does  not  so  choose  ;  and 
we  are  there  faced,  not  only  by  an  apparent  chaos  of  outcries, 
doctrines,  and  fantasies  concerning  many  things  under  the 
sun,  but  by  an  answering  variety  of  speech,  for  which  little  has 
prepared  us,  and  which  no  description  can  exhaust.  Wonder, 
sadness,  admiration,  intellectual  disgust,  Ruskin  stirs  them  all ; 


LATER;  MANNER— SOCIAL  ENTHUSIASM        239 

but  that,  for  the  present  purpose,  is  neither  here  nor  there, 
for  language,  at  least,  seldom  fails  to  answer  to  his  call.  Some- 
times, not  often,  he  uses  a  kind  of  allusive  short-hand  ;  or, 
as  in  Prceterita,  is  calm  and  limpid  ;  or,  in  Fors  above  all,  he  is 
swept  over  by  moods  that  pass  into  one  another  one  knows  not 
how,  like  a  stream  pencilled  by  changing  flaws  of  air.  But  he 
always  has  the  words.  Once  in  Fors  (No.  67)  he  explains  the 
principle  of  this  erratic  writing,  in  words  that  apply  to  many 
of  his  other  works  after  1865  : 

The  violence,  or  grotesque  aspect,  of  a  statement  may  seem  as 
if  I  were  mocking  ;  but  this  comes  mainly  of  my  endeavour  to 
bring  the  absolute  truth  out  into  pure  crystalline  structure,  un- 
modified by  disguise  of  custom,  or  obscurity  of  language. 

Could  the  whole  aim  of  the  art  of  prose  be  more  surely  described 
than  in  this  stray  sentence — to  bring  the  absolute  truth  out  into 
pure  crystalline  structure  ?  Think  of  much  celebrated  writing, 
and  ask  what  would  become  of  it  if  everything  foreign  to  this 
aim  were  blotted  out.  Substitute  exact  meaning  for  absolute 
truth,  and  you  have  said  what  Ruskin,  more  nearly  than  most 
writers,  accomplishes.  What,  then,  was  it  that  he  exactly 
did  mean,  in  these  later  years  ?  Here,  again,  I  shall  but 
attempt  to  take  a  few  bearings. 


XI 

From  the  first,  with  his  instinct  for  referring  all  things  to 
their  '  root  in  human  passion  and  human  hope,'  he  had  refused 
to  confine  himself  to  art  strictly  so-called,  or  to  the  world  of 
nature  lying  outside  man.  He  had  traced  the  influence  of 
architecture  upon  the  workman,  and  of  the  '  mountain  gloom  ' 
upon  the  countryman,  and  had  discovered  in  the  fine  art  of  a 
people  the  index  to  its  morals,  and  in  the  defacement  of  town 
and  country  the  tokens  of  national  decline .  The  closing  pages 
of  The  Stones  of  Venice,  the  lectures  on  The  Political  Economy 
of  Art,  and  many  a  vehement  outburst,  had  shown  his  growing 
preoccupation  with  the  '  condition-of -England-question  '  and 
with  the  causes  of  social  welfare  x  and  misery.  As  we  have 
seen,  he  took  for  his  master  Carlyle,  who  impelled  him  along 
the  path  on  which  he  had  already  started.  '  I  find  Carlyle 's 
stronger  thinking  colouring  mine  continually,'  he  writes  in 
1856,  and  he  acknowledges  that  Carlyle's  idiom  and  rhythm 
can  often  be  traced  in  his  own.  Carlyle's  letters  of  encourage- 
ment and  delight,  as  he  receives  book  after  book  from  his 


240  JOHN  RUSKIN 

disciple,  from  The  Stones  of  Venice  to  Fors  Clavigera,  show  his 
conviction  that  there  was  one  man  at  least,  amidst  a  population 
mostly  fools,  who  was  capable  of  living  speech,  a  St.  George  who 
might  really  rip  up  the  belly  of  the  dragon.  The  book  that 
affected  Ruskin  most  deeply  was  Past  and  Present,  perhaps  the 
most  remarkable  fruit  in  English  literature  of  the  mediaeval 
revival.  Carlyle's  deep  sympathy — at  first  deeper  than  his 
contempt — for  the  blind  multitude,  who  were  miserable  for  lack 
of  a  heaven-born  feudal  ruler,  found  an  echo  in  Ruskin  ;  so  did 
his  derision  of  all  the  remedies  of  all  the  liberal  freethinkers  ; 
while  the  mysticism  of  the  two  men,  with  all  its  differences,  was 
akin.  And  Ruskin's  war  on  the  economists  was  also  Carlyle's 
war,  only  conducted  with  far  greater  precision  of  attack.  Nor 
was  it  only  a  war,  for  Ruskin  perceived  and  said,  much  more 
definitely  than  his  master,  what  ought  to  be  done  next. 

Thackeray,  the  friendly  editor  of  the  Cornhill,  was  compelled 
by  the  proprietor,  to  put  a  stop  to  the  four  papers  entitled  Unto 
This  Last;  which  Ruskin  always  considered,  as  most" of  his 
readers  do  to-day,  to  contain  in  its  purest  expression  the  essence 
of  his  teaching  concerning  the  true  '  wealth  of  nations r~~As~~we 
look-tferough  the  old  volume,  No.  II.,  July  to  December  I860, 
and  see  these  articles  interleaving  Framley  Parsonage,  Rounda- 
bout Papers,  The  Four  Georges,  and  verse  by  Matthew  Arnold 
and  Elizabeth  Browning,  we  are  tempted  to  coin  some  Ruskinian 
title  for  them  like  '  The  Rejected  Stone  ' !  Thackeray  had  to 
prefer  contributions  on  adulteration,  or  '  the  electric  telegraph.' 
The  public  dismay  and  booing  were  most  emphatic.  The 
'  man  of  genius  '  had  '  gone  outside  his  province,'  with  deplor- 
able results.  The  man  of  genius  continued  to  do  so  ;  in  1862-3 
he  produced  Essays  in  Political  Economy,  this  time  in  Eraser, 
under  the  auspices  of  Froude.  That  work,  the  basis  of  the 
Munera  Pulveris  of  1872,  was  also  generally  reviled  ;  and  the 
publisher,  finding  that  the  supply  exceeded  the  demand, 
would  have  no  more  of  the  goods  :  a  practical  illustration, 
from  Ruskin's  point  of  view,  of  the  '  value  of  a  commodity.' 
In  the  miscellany  of  letters  called  Time  and  Tide,  by  Weare 
and  Tyne,  addressed  to  a  working  man,  he  returned,  inter- 
mittently but  hotly,  to  the  charge  ;  and  also  in  many  a  letter 
to  the  press  and  passing  utterance,  and  in  Fors  Clavigera 
afterwards. 

Political  strife,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  Ruskin  did  not  touch. 
He  was  of  no  definable  party,  and  though  he  called  himself 
a  Tory  of  the  old  school,  and  was  full  of  feudal  notions  of 
paternal  kingship  and  heaven-born  aristocracy,  he  was  also 


POLITICAL  ECONOMY— HIS  PROPHECIES       241 

much  too  full  of  explosive  material  to  be  a  Tory  really  ;  indeed, 
he  attacked  the  assumptions  of  Tory,  Whig,  and  Radical  alike, 
at  their  roots,  and  by  constant  implication.  All  of  them  were 
more  or  less  devoted  to  the  policy  of  laissez-faire,  which  to 
Ruskin  simply  means  the  neglect  by  the  State  "both  of  its 
obvious  duty  and  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation.  This 
neglect  he  condemned  at  every  point.  But  it  was  on  the  old 
'  mercantile  economy,5  now  sometimes  called  '  plutonomy,' 
that  he  opened  fire  ;  choosing  the  younger  Mill  and  Fawcett 
for  his  targets,  but  actually  criticising  the  more  abstract 
school  of  Ricardo  and  Mill  the  elder,  with  its  central  concep- 
tion of  the  '  economic  man  '  and  his  impulses.  Ruskin  denied 
that  a  separate  and  valid  science,  inductive  and  deductive, 
could  be  framed  on  the  basis  of  disregarding  every  human 
motive,  in  commercial  affairs,  except  that  of  profit.  Or,  if 
and  so  far  as  such  a  science  could  be  framed,  he  denied  that  it 
deserved  to  be  called  '  political  economy.'  The  social  feelings 
and  the  play  of  disinterested  motive  were  not  casual  factors 
that  could  be  neglected,  as  Euclid  neglects  the  breadth  of  a 
line,  but  vital  and  inherent  ones.  The  orthodox  economy  was 
only  concerned  with  '  certain  accidental  phenomena  of  modern 
commercial  operations,'  and  not  with  the  total  forces  which 
really  move ,  or  ought  to  move,  the  whole  body  politic .  '  Wealth,' 
hitherto  defined  in  terms  of  the  market,  must  be  re-defined  in 
terms  of  '  life  '  :  and  the  science  of  political  economy  is  meant 
for  the  furtherance  of  human  life,  understood  in  terms  of  virtue 
and  happiness.  On  this  showing,  many  alleged  eternal  neces- 
sities go  by  the  board  :  the  '  laws  '  of  supply  and  demand,  the 
competitive  system,  the  policy  of  non-interferenop,  They  are 
not  eternal  at  all,  said  Ruskin,  and  moreover  they  are  inhm-fqitly 
poisonous,  and  ought  to  vanish.  Wages,  in  particular,  must 
be  fixed,  not  by  the  lawofthejnarket,  but  by  the  law  of  justice. 
For  Justice ,  to  put  tfiecase  no  higher,  pays ,  and  a  fixed  minimum" 
wage  is  good  national  economy.  Such  is  the  drift,  in  Unto 
This  Last,  of  Ruskin 's  eloquence,  which  has  a  sharper  and  more 
flashing  edge  than  ever  before.  The  book  is  full  of  impassioned 
appeal  and  text-flinging,  of  fantastic  touches  and  of  satire  ; 
but  its  power  lies  in  the  fierce  precision  of  its  analysis . 

Yet  Ruskin  was  stung  to  utterance  not  so  much  by  the  printed 
fallacy  as  by  the  sight  of  the  industrial  and  social  system  itself, 
by  the  evidence  of  actual  suffering  and  injustice,  and  by  the 
exclusion,  under  existing  terms,  of  whole  multitudes  of  men 
from  any  reasonable  and  hopeful  way  of  living.  Like  the 
dreamer  in  Hyperion,  he  was  one  of  those  to  whom  the  miseries 
VOL.  i.  o 


242  JOHN  RUSKIN 

of  the  world  '  are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest.'  Carlyle 
had  long  since  assailed  the  '  dismal  science  '  ;  the  novelists 
and  poets,  Dickens  and  Hood,  Mrs.  Browning  and  Tennyson, 
had  denounced  bumbledom,  or  sweating,  or  adulteration,  or 
legal  cruelty  to  children.  The  tide  of  sympathy  and  indigna- 
tion had  overflowed  into  literature  ;  the  Christian  Socialists 
of  the  Maurice  group  were  full  of  it.  Ruskin  went  along  with 
this  tide,  and  his  work  swelled  its  volume  ;  but  in  two  respects 
he  was  peculiar.  In  the  first  place,  he  had  approached  the 
whole  question,  originally,  from  the  artistic  side,  asking  himself 
in  what  soil  of  character,  and  in  what  sunshine  of  welfare,  the 
living  art  of  a  nation  must  be  nourished,  and  thence  proceeding 
to  the  economical  social  problem.  And  secondly,  while  the  rest 
were  angrily,  or  generously,  or  musically,  sorry  ('  there  is  such 
lovely,  lovely,  misery  in  this  Paradise,'  he  wrote,  ironically,  of 
Morris's  poem),  he,  in  his  irregular  but  pertinent  style,  reasoned. 
He  reasoned,  not  only  critically  or  aggressively,  but  with  no 
little  constructive  and  practical  instinct.  He  was  much 
derided,  but  produced  an  effect  which  he  did  not  live  to  appre- 
ciate. He  helped,  b}'  his  rays  of  insight  and  foresight,  to 
quicken  the  arrival  of  legislative  and  social  changes  which 
many  other  forces  were  conspiring  to  produce.  His  admirers, 
with  good  right,  enumerate  the  reforms  which  he  proposed  in 
1862,  in  the  preface  to  the  collected  papers  of  Unto  This  Last, 
and  which  have  since  been,  or  have  begun  to  be,  realised  : 
national  education,  elementary  and  technical,  state -controlled  ; 
the  fair  and  fixed  wage  ;  the  old  age  pension  ;  and  the  handling 
of  unemployment  by  the  State.  The  'Oxford  graduate'  had 
travelled  far,  and  his  Odyssey  was  still  only  half  through  ; 
reckoned  by  years,  even  less  than  half. 

XII      , 

The  contents  oi^Muneru  Pulveris  l  are  too  intricate  to  be 
specified  here,  and  can  only  be  understood  in  the  light  of 
Ruskin's  many  stray  expansions  and  applications  of  them. 
The  general  aim  is  to  lay  a  basement  for  the  edifice  of  a  neA\ 
and  true  '  political  economy."  Ruskin  begins  "by  closely  defbfiK 
iilg"the  essential  terms,  '  wealth/ -Mnoney,'  and  '  riches,'  and 
develops  the  definitions  under  the  headings  of  '  storekeepin 
coin -keeping,  commerce,  government,  and  mastership.'  lie 
manages  to  touch  on  almost  every  branch  of  economy  :  urges, 
truly,  the  evil  of  expenditure  on  luxury,  also  the  illegitimacy  of 
interest — a  favourite  craze,  afterwards   much  insisted  on  in 


MUNERA  PULVERIS—Tim  MYSTERY  OF  LIFE  243 

Fors.     He  ranges  from  the  different  species  of  law  to  a  classifi- 
cation of  the  forms  of  government,  and  from  the  nature  of 
currency  to  the  ethical  training  of  a  nation.     The  edifice  was 
never  built  ;  the  plan  of  it  has  to  be  partially  pieced  together 
by  students  :    a  turret  here,  a  traceried  archway  there,  and 
miscellaneous  half -hewn  material  everywhere.     The  work  of 
interpretation  is  well  worth  doing,  and  has  been  well  done  ; 
and  the  result  establishes,  despite  all  Ruskin's  fantasies  and 
excursions,  his  power  of  divining,  through  seeming  paradox, 
the  commonplaces  of  the  morrow.     Munera  Pulveris,  which 
begins  in  good  order,  goes  off  into  ironies,  and  parables,  and 
interpretations  of  Dante,  which  are  often  delightful  to  read 
but  do  not  make  for  clearness.     Time  and  Tide  is  yet  more 
discursive    and   indescribable,    but   contains    much   scattered 
good  sense  and  wit.    A  more  definite  impression  can  be  gained 
from  three  other  works  of  this  period,  Sesame  and  Lilies  (1865), 
The  Ethics  of  the  Dust  (1866),  and  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive 
(1866).     Here  Ruskin's  thought  and  style  are  perhaps  at  the 
fulness  of  their  power.     Sesame  and  Lilies,  one  of  Ruskin's 
very  popular  works,  consisted  at  first  of  two  discourses.    The 
first,  Of  Kings'  Treasuries,  is  a  noble  and  sagacious  plea  for 
the  right  use  and  valuation  of  books.     The  second,  Of  Queens' 
Gardens,  set  out  a  high  and  gracious,  yet  altogether  too  limited 
and  domestic,  ideal  of  female  character  ;    The  Angel  in  the 
House  is  the  favourite  poem.    There  is  a  certain,  doubtless 
unconscious,  note  of  condescension  and  pedagogy  in  Ruskin's 
references  to  women,  amid  all  his  reverence  for  them  :   a  mix- 
ture of  avuncular  scolding  and  garland -offering,  which  I  confess 
to  finding  faintly  offensive.    This  is  very  well  in  the  dialogues 
with  little  girls,  entitled  The  Ethics  of  the  Dust,  which  are 
managed  with  brilliant  skill,  and  which  are  nominally,  and  in 
part  really,  lessons  on  the  construction  and  beauties  of  crystals. 
But  Ruskin's  highest  qualities  are  shown  in  the  lecture  on  The 
Mystery  of  Life  and  its  Arts,  which  was  afterwards  appended  to 
Sesame.     It  ranges  far,  and  contains  much  of  the  essence  of 
his  creed,  in  respect  of  art  and  of  life.     But,  above  all,  it  reveals 
his  inner  temper  at  its  sanest,  and  also  on  its  more  mystical 
side.    This  Dublin  lecture  of  1868  is  also  noteworthy,  like  the 
preface  to  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  for  Ruskin's  strong  and 
pathetic  appeal  to  the  agnostic  school.    We  ought  to  mark 
this  stray  point  of  fiery  contact  between  Ruskin's  thought  and 
the  secular  movement  of  his  time.     In  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive, 
with  its  three  lectures  on  work,  on  traffic,  and  on  war,  there  is 
something  of  the  same  quality  ;    but  on  war  the  prophet  con- 


244  JOHN  RUSKIN 

f esses,  like  most  other  men,  that  he  has  two  minds,  and  he  is 
equally  emphatic  in  either  of  them. 

xin 

Some  of  Ruskin's  other  writings  are  shaped  by  the  require- 
ments of  the  lecturer.  He  held  the  Chair  of  Fine  Art  at  Oxford 
twice,  from  1869  to  1878,  and  from  1883  to  1885,  a  serious 
illness  occurring  in  the  interval ;  and  he  gave  many  addresses 
elsewhere.  Man}'  of  his  books  are  almost  too  disorderly  to 
classify,  though  he  often  shows  his  power  of  perfect  and  shapely 
disquisition.  But  the  habit  of  letting  his  mind  and  his  subject 
drift  grew  upon  him  ;  and  though  it  delighted  his  pupils,  who 
never  knew  what  was  coming,  it  is  apt  to  tax  the  reader.  Yet 
his  power  of  recovery  is  wonderful.  Ruskin's  simplest,  quietest, 
and  most  continuous  production,  Pr&terita,  was  begun  (1885) 
in  the  intervals  of  a  fierce  brain-disturbance,  which  only  occa- 
sionally ruffles  its  even  stream.  Most  of  his  remaining  works 
may  be  grouped  somewhat  as  follows  : 

(1)  Studies  of  natural  things.  These  are  often  designed' to 
give  a  simple  sort  of  instruction,  and  are  studies  in  the  '  science 
of  aspects,'  with  not  a  little  of  science,  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
interposed,  and  also  with  plenty  of  digression  upon  things  in 
general.  Thus  Proserpina  is  concerned  with  flowers,  and 
Love's  Meinie  (1873)  with  birds  and  their  feathers  ;  while  a 
whole  volume  of  the  standard  edition  is  filled  with  work  on 
geology  and  mineralogy,  Ruskin's  earliest  loves  ;  Deucalion 
being  the  chief  single  item.  •  The  controversy  with  Tyndall 
and  others  over  the  origin  of  glaciers  falls  into  this  department. 
The  Ethics  of  the  Dust  may  be  mentioned  once  more,  with  its 
account  of  crystals.  A  transition  to  the  next  heading  is  formed 
by  The  Eagle's  Nest,  which  discusses  '  the  relation  of  natural 
science  to  art.'  Ruskin  often — not  always — reviled  science, 
and  did  so  ignorantly  ;  and  had  no  conception  of  the  philosophic 
bearings  of  scientific  discovery,  and  abused  Darwin  and  Huxley 
in  a  wild  helpless  fashion  ;  having  less  excuse  for  this  procedure 
than  Carlyle  (from  whom  he  may  in  part  have  borrowed  it), 
seeing  that  he  was  himself,  in  his  own  field,  scientific.  When  he 
is  not  enforcing  an  imaginary  rivalry  between  science  and  art, 
he  is  mostly  beating  at  an  open  door.  His  plea  amounts  to 
saying  that  they  are  different  things,  and  that  science  must 
not  pretend  to  give  what  art  alone  can  give.  He  says,  for 
instance,  that  '  sight  is  a  spiritual  power,'  and  not  simply 
the  subject  of  optics.     When  he  gets  back  to  art  and  to 


NATURE-STUDIES— LITERARY  JUDGEMENTS    -245 

things  imaginatively  seen,  he  becomes  luminous  again  ;  the 
pages  on  the  eye  of  the  snake  and  of  the  eagle  are  in  his 
best  style.  There  is  a  touch  of  Blake  in  his  marvelling  temper, 
and  the  motto  of  The  Eagle's  Nest  is  taken  from  the  Book  of 
Thel. 

(2)  While  his  powers  lasted,  Ruskin  showed  immense  industry 
as  a  critic  and  teacher  of  fine  art.  His  biography  must  be 
studied  to  see  how  seriously  he  took  his  work,  and  into  what  end- 
less practical  activities  it  led  him .  He  retained  his  former  power, 
though  he  wrote  no  great  comprehensive  book.  The  Laws  of 
Fesole  treats  of  perspective,  Aratra  Pentelici  of  Greek  building 
and  sculpture,  Ariadne  Florentina  of  engraving,  Vol  d'Arno 
of  early  Tuscan  painting.  Padua,  Verona,  Venice,  Florence  are 
his  chief  hunting-grounds  :  his  guides,  to  their  paintings  and 
buildings,  his  descriptions  and  judgements  fill  several  volumes. 
Handbooks  like  Mornings  in  Florence  and  St.  Mark's  Best 
have  been  used  by  generations  of  devoted  visitors.  In  this 
kind  of  labour  Ruskin  is  distinguished  by  precision  and  business- 
like method  ;  but  his  inspiration  and  his  strange  wild  vitality 
of  touch  never  disappear.  Of  quite  another  stamp  are  the 
Oxford  lectures  that  he  gave,  towards  the  close  of  his  second 
tenure  of  his  chair,  on  The  Art  of  England. 

These  are  kindly  and  genial,  with  the  inevitable  sallies  and 
back-lashings  ;  they  deal,  for  example,  with  Ruskin's  old 
admirations,  Rossetti  and  Burne -Jones  ;  with  Leech  and 
Tenniel,  Allingham  and  Kate  Greenaway  ;  and  with  Watts, 
a  fellow -idealist.  I  heard  these  addresses  :  the  voice  comes 
back  to  the  mind's  ear,  with  its  singular  wailing  x  quality,  which 
seemed  to  the  young  imagination  like  that  of  a  wandering  and 
saddened  angel,  full  of  a  quite  woeful,  open-eyed,  inexpugnable 
surpiHse  that  the  incorrigible  world  of  men  should  be  what  it  is, 
and  yet  never  be  ashamed  of  itself.  This  was  the  last  course 
but  one  ;  the  last  was  that  on  The  Pleasures  of  England, 
delivered  not  long  before  Ruskin's  last  retirement  and  the 
breakdown  of  the  '  physical  basis  of  mind  ' — a  calamity, 
though,  which  did  not  come  on  all  at  once  ;  and  the  happy 
intervals  permitted  the  composition  of  Prceterita. 

(3)  The  Queen  of  the  Air  (1869),  which  partly  reproduces  The 
Cestus  of  Aglaia,  stands  in  a  class  somewhat  apart  ;  though  its 
object,  namely  the  curious,  and  often  arbitrary,  interpretation 
of  myth  and  symbol,  was  most  congenial  to  the  author.  It  is 
connected  with  his  fancy  for  chasing,  as  though  with  a  butterfly- 
net,  the  etymological  roots  of  words,  and  also  with  his  love  for 
finding  secondary,  or  spiritual,  meanings  in  all  things  however 


246  JOHN  RUSKIN 

innocent,    one    of    the    pleasantly    mediaeval    traits    of    his 
intellect . 

(4)  As  of  old,  Ruskin  wrote  much  on  literature,  and  a  small 
volume  might  with  profit  be  put  together  containing  his 
criticisms  of  books.  He  read  as  a  poet  reads,  not  academically  ; 
but  he  read  a  great  deal.  His  dislikes  are  not  always  interesting, 
or  safe,  but  where  he  is  at  home  with  his  author  his  critical 
judgements  are  among  the  best  to  be  found  anywhere.  They  are 
not,  as  a  rule,  concerned  with  form  or  expression,  though  in  the 
papers  called  Fiction  Fair  and  Foul  he  returns  to  the  subject 
of  the  '  grand  style,'  which  he  had  discussed  long  before,  in 
reference  to  fine  art,  in  Modern  Painters.  His  Shakespearian 
examples  are  as  apt  as  Matthew  Arnold's,  and  are  taken  from 
Henry  the  Fifth  and  Coriolanus.  But  the  grand  style  is  only 
the  perfect  expression  of  a  noble  spirit  ;  and  the  quest  of 
Ruskin,  here  as  ever,  is  mostly  for  '  nobleness,'  as  distinct 
from  simple  beauty,  and  still  more  as  distinct  from  expressive- 
ness :  the  cult  of  which,  involving  as  it  does  the  exhibition  of 
life  in  its  meaner  discords  and  intractable  matter,  is  alien  to 
him  ;  so  that  we  must  not  expect  him  to  care  for  the  kind  of 
poetry  or  fiction  that  dwells  upon  it.  Ruskin 's  drag-net,  there- 
fore, for  'foul  fiction,'  fiction  mecroyante,  is  altogether  too 
sweeping,  for  it  would  include  almost  every  exhibition  of  the 
horrible -grotesque  in  literature  ;  and  of  fair  fiction  his  exemplar 
is  Scott,  to  whom  in  Fors  he  returns  continually,  and  of  whom 
he  is  a  sworn  and  sound  admirer,  and  a  lifelong  praiser.  The 
unsentimental  side  of  Ruskin  should  never  be  forgotten  ;  and 
what  Johnson  says  of  Shakespeare's  plays  Ruskin,  perhaps  in 
echo,  as  justly  observes  of  the  Waverley  Novels  : 

Marriage  is  by  no  means,  in  his  conception  of  man  and  woman, 
the  most  important  business  of  their  existence  ;  nor  love  the  only 
reward  of  their  virtue  or  exertion  ...  we  shall  often  find  that 
love  in  them  [the  Waverleys]  is  merely  a  fight  by  which  the  sterner 
features  of  character  are  to  be  irradiated. 

Of  Dickens  he  writes  with  more  reserves,  yet  with  great 
affection.  But  his  fullest  allegiance  is  paid  to  the  poets,  and 
above  all  to  Dante.  He  quotes  from  all  parts  of  the  Divine 
Comedy.  Dante,  by  the  force  of  his  '  imagination  penetrative,' 
and  of  consummate  style,  effects  a  fusion  of  faithfully  observed 
imagery  with  spiritual  meaning,  in  a  degree,  and  with  a  con- 
stancy, that  has  never  been  equalled.  Hence  of  all  writers 
he  spoke  most  intimately  to  Ruskin,  who  is  for  ever  dissatisfied 
with  the  mere  face  of  things,seeking  for  some  ulterior  significance 


LITERARY  JUDGEMENTS— FORS  CLAVWERA   247 

in  simple  beauty,  and  for  moral  type  and  symbol  in  life  every- 
where. But  Ruskin's  explorations  of  literature  would  take 
long  to  indicate.  In  Fors  there  are  'readings'  in  Plato, 
Shakespeare,  Chaucer,  Marmontel,  Froissart,  and  other  authors. 
His  admiration  for  Wordsworth,  Keats,  and  Tennyson,  and 
also  for  Coventry  Patmore,  is  to  be  expected  ;  his  good  word 
for  Byron,  less  so  ;  his  prejudice  against  Shelley  is  an  aberration. 
The  series  called  Bibliotheca  Pastorum  comprises  a  translation 
of  the  Economist  of  Xenophon  ;  a  selection  (called  A  Knight's 
Faith),  with  comment,  from  the  biography  of  Sir  Herbert 
Edwardes,  that  devout  soldier,  administrator,  and  one  of  the 
saviours  of  India  in  1857  ;  a  reproduction  (Rock  Honeycomb), 
again  with  comment,  of  some  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  versified 
psalms  ;  and,  growing  out  of  this  last,  a  confused  little  manual, 
done  with  immense  relish,  on  The  Elements  of  Prosody.  All 
these  enterprises  fit  aptly  enough  into  Ruskin's  characteristic 
enthusiasms,  social,  ethical,  and  religious  ;  and  so  does  his 
sponsoring  of  Miss  Alexander's  Story  of  Ida  and  her  Roadside 
Songs  of  Tuscany. 


xrv 

Fors  Clavigera  *  is  a  series  of  ninety-six  open  letters  addressed 
'  to"  the  workmen  and  labourers  of  Great  Britain,'  and  issued" 
TTcmrhTaily^every  month,  between  1871  and  1884.  The  title, 
with  the  triple  sense  attached  to  each  word  in  it,  is  untranslat- 
able ;  and  the  medley  of  the  work  itself  is  hardly  to  be  sorted 
out.  Written  in  the  intervals  of  Ruskin's  other  industries,  Fors 
is  a  descant  on  almost  anything  that  could  anger,  or  grieve,  or 
inspire,  or  amuse,  or  otherwise  interest  him  ;  on  the  evils  of  Eng- 
land and  Europe,  economic  and  spiritual,  and  on  the  remedies 
for  them  ;  and  on  books,  pictures,  and  travels .  Fors  relates  all 
his  dreams,  actual  (it  feigned,  nightmarish  or  harppy-r-his.  whims 
and  humours,  Ariel  fancies  or  Puckish  mischiefs  ;  his  memories 
and  disappointments  ;  and  all  grave  things  and  all  trifles  that 
crossed  his  brain,  just  in  the  state  of  order,  or  disorder,  in  which 
they  crossed  it.    A  friend  complained  to  him  of  the  disorder  : 

But  he  might  as  well  plead  with  a  birch-tree  growing  out  of  a 
crag,  to  arrange  its  boughs  beforehand.  The  winds  and  floods 
will  arrange  them  according  to  their  wild  liking  ;  all  that  the  tree 
has  to  do,  or  can  do,  is  to  grow  gaily,  if  it  may  be  ;  sadly,  if  gaiety 
is  impossible  ;  and  let  the  black  jags  and  scars  rend  the  rose -white 
of  its  trunk  where  Fors  shall  choose.     (Letter  50.) 


248  JOHN  RUSKIN 

Fors  itself  is  more  like  a  jungle  than  a  tree  ;  and,  so  far  as 
we  can  clear  the  jungle,  so  far  does  it  lose  its  character  of 
mingled  charm  and  provocativeness.  It  contains  few  ideas 
that  are  fresh  to  the  reader  of  Ruskin,  who  returns  to  his  crusade 
and  reiterates  his  gospel ;  but  the  old  thoughts  are  presented 
from  new  angles,  in  marvellous  re -wordings  ;  not  in  form  and 
order  at  all,  but  in  personal  monologue,  and  as  part  of  the 
author's  confession  to  himself  and  to  the  world,  in  a  private 
mental  journal  now  made  public.  We  might  judge  Fors  Clavi- 
gera  either  as  a  contribution  to  thought,  or  as  a  piece  of  writing, 
or  as  completing  our  knowledge  of  Ruskin  as  a  man. 

In  the  first  of  these  aspects,  Fors  must  be  considered  as  part 
of  his  entire  campaign,  militant  and  prophetic  ;  and  brings  up 
at  once  the  large  question  what  Ruskin  has  really  done,  in 
that  capacity,  for  the  English  mind.  And  this  at  least  is  the 
beginning  of  an  answer  :  that  he  must  at  any  rate  be  honoured 
for  his  far-reaching  prophecies,  and  for  his  unfailing  valour, 
in  the  cases  where  history  has  actually  borne  out  the  one,  and 
truth  has  profited  by  the  other.  The  old  '  economy  '  has  been 
transformed,  Ruskin  helping,  and  its  subject-matter  absorbed 
in  that  of  sociology,  or  the  science  of  social  welfare.  The  duty 
of  the  community  to  labour,  to  children,  to  the  aged  poor,  and 
to  education,  art,  and  craft,  has  begun,  Ruskin  helping,  to  be 
acted  upon.  He  did  not  create,  but  he  divined,  in  his  irregular 
way  he  quickened,  the  mental  forces  at  work.  In  the  Daily 
Telegraph  of  September  19,  1918,  there  is  a  report  of  the  aims 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labour  (a  formidable  body), 
presented  to  the  Inter-Allied  Labour  Congress,  which  contains 
a  sentence  with  a  remarkably  Ruskinian  ring  : 

That  in  law  and  in  practice  the  principle  should  be  recognised 
that  the  labour  of  a  human  being  is  not  a  commodity  or  article  of 
commerce. 

Much  of  the  guerrilla  warfare  of  Fors  is  directed  to  enforcing 
this  truth.  No  doubt,  all  manner  of  world-forces,  and  many 
schools  of  thought,  have  worked  in  the  same  direction.  Of 
Marxite  or  other  thinkers  Ruskin  seems  to  have  known  nothing  ; 
but  his  prescience  is  not  less  remarkable  because  he  laboured 
alone.  And,  no  doubt,  we  are  loth  to  complain  if  a  man  who 
did  so  much,  labouring  alone,  overshot  the  mark.  But  Ruskin's 
general  attack  on  the  modern  world,  or  the  English  world  of 
the  Seventies  and  Eighties,  becomes  an  impossible  one.  Apart 
from  his  special  and  vouchsafed  revelation,  he  knew  little  to 
the  purpose  of  its  thought  and  literature,  or  of  the  larger 


PROPHECIES  FULFILLED  249 

political  forces  at  work.  His  fanatical  view  of  science  is  now 
only  a  curiosity.  Much  of  Fors  might  have  been  written  in  a 
dream  ;  but  it  contains  starry  pages,  piercing  sallies,  gentle 
humour,  as  well  as  much  dreary  invective  and  positive  silli- 
ness. The  style  is  perfectly  expressive  everywhere.  But  it 
is  difficult  not  to  find  Fors,  as  a  whole,  repellent  and  painful. 
It  is  the  memorial  of  an  unique  genius  and  temper  ;  but  the 
temper  is  jarred,  and  the  genius  is  too  often  in  disintegration. 
To  treat  it,  as  some  do,  as  Ruskin/s  masterpiece  is  to  do  him 
much  wrong.  We  must  remember  that  after  Fors  came  Prop- 
terita,  with  its  appendix  Dilecta  ;  and  these,  as  I  said,  were 
written  when  that  noble  and  much -vexed  spirit  was  passing 
through  a  season  of  calm  weather,  in  spite  of  the  thickening 
storms. 


CHAPTER   X 
EARLIER  CRITICS  :    AND  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


For  a  time  after  1830.  English  criticism  1  was  at  something  of 
an  ebb  ;    and  this  while  Sainte-Beuve  was  writing  his  earlier 
Portraits,  and  Gustave  Planche  his  articles,  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux    Mondes.     Our    romantic    discoverers,    Lamb    and    his 
company,  had  departed — all  but  De   Quincey.     Carlyle  and 
Macaulay  had  begun  to  speak,  but  they  are  not  critics  of  art 
first  and  foremost  ;    and  both  of  them  are  infected  by  the 
arrogant  official  tone   of  the  journals  in   which  they  write. 
The  heavy  papers  of  the  Quarterly  type,  which  made  or  marred 
the  fortunes  of  books  before  1850,  are  mostly  dead  reading 
now  ;    even  a  man  of  talent  like  Lockhart  is  weighed  down. 
Good  things,  it  is  true,  have  been  saved  from  the  files.     Such 
are  the  scholarly  and  pointed  articles  of  Whit  well  Elwin,  the 
editor  and  prosecutor  of  Pope  ;   and  there  is  lively  good  sense 
as  well  as  information  in  the  Essays  from  the  Quarterly,  by  James 
Hannay.     Also  there  is  the  figure  of  the  assiduous  reviewer, 
journalist,  politician,  and  talker,  Abraham  Hay  ward  (1801- 
84)  ;    but  his  letters  and  his  prose  translation  (1833)  of  Faust 
are  of  more  interest  than  his  opinions  on  literature.     The  truth 
is,  Matthew  Arnold  so  completely  changed  the  character  of 
criticism  that  we  too  easily  forget  the  other  writers  who  kept 
it  alive  about  the  middle  of  the  century.     One  of  these  undoubt  - 
edly  was  Walter  Bagehot,  who  has  been  described  ;  and,  among 
the  rest,  Keble,  Brimley,  and  Dallas  are  decidedly  the  most 
original. 

Keble 's  *  Prcdectiones  Academicce,  delivered  from  the  Oxford 
Chair  of  Poetry  from  1832  to  1841,  were  published  in  1844. 
They  were  unluckily  in  Latin,  and  have  seldom  been  read  except 
by  students,  but  can  now  be  seen  in  an  English  version.  They 
are  discourses  of  mark  in  themselves,  and  also  historically 
significant.  The  general  topic  is  De  Poeticce  Vi  Medica — on 
the  curative,  or  '  cathartic,'  power  of  poetry  ;  the  motto  comes 
from  Plato's  Ion,  where  the  souls  of  poets  and  lovers  of  poetry 

260 


KEBLE  251 

are  described  as  links  in  the  magnetic  chain  hanging  from 
the  original  loadstone,  itself  divine  ;  and  the  dedication  is 
to  Wordsworth,  who  is  a  provider  not  only  of  sweet  poetry 
but  of  sacred  truth.  Keble's  point  of  view  is  thus  sufficiently 
defined.  The  Greeks,  supported  by  Wordsworth,  give  him 
his  canon  and  principle,  half -artistic  and  half  didactic  ;  and 
Greek  poetry  is  his  main  subject.  Homer  and  iEschylus, 
Sophocles  and  Pindar  are  expounded  at  length  ;  Euripides  is 
well  defended  against  his  detractors  ;  his  strength,  saj*s  Keble, 
lies  in  painting  'domestic  affairs  and  affections.'  Theocritus, 
Lucretius,  and  Virgil  follow  ;  and  Keble,  like  Fenelon  (of  whom 
he  often  reminds  us),  excels  in  discovering  the  more  elusive 
beauties  of  landscape  in  the  poets.  Lucretius  he  duly  exalts  ; 
but  we  are  near  a  point  of  danger  when  that  poet's  irreligion 
is  extenuated  on  the  score  of  his  mental  affliction. 

But  Keble's  theory  of  poetry  is  by  no  means  illiberal  or 
sectarian.  Poetic  utterance,  he  says,  is  at  bottom  a  relief  or 
vent  for  powerful  emotions  or  oppressive  thoughts  ;  the  act 
of  shaping  these  into  musical  words  steadies  and  balances  the 
soul ;  to  linger  over  diction  and  cadence  occupies  and  diverts 
the  spirit.  The  result,  to  both  poet  and  hearer,  is  a  certain 
mood  of  composure,  or  '  tranquillity  ' — a  view  which  is  an 
obvious  reminiscence  of  Wordsworth's.  Yet  poetry  has  its 
origin  in  passion  ;  that  is  indispensable  ;  in  fact  poets  are  to  be 
divided,  in  respect  of  their  rank  and  value,  by  no  other  criterion. 
So  far  Keble  is  a  disciple  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and 
says  nothing  very  new  ;  but  his  distinction  between  '  primary  ' 
and  '  secondary  '  poets  is  the  most  original  part  of  his  treatise. 
Joseph  Warton  and  others  had  long  before,  while  trying  to 
put  Pope  in  his  place,  drawn  the  distinction  between  the  poets 
of  '  nature,'  which  is  '  eternal,'  and  the  poets  of  '  wit  and  satire,' 
which  are  transitory.  Keble  goes  deeper  :  primary  poets,  he 
says,  are  those  who  write  under  the  impulse  of  their  own  original 
passion  ;  such  is  Homer,  such  are  iEschylus  and  Dante.  Horace 
is  not  one  of  them,  with  all  his  gifts.  Horace  has  no  '  serious 
regard  '  for  any  one  of  all  the  subjects  which  he  versifies  so 
admirably.  Nor  is  Dryden  a  primary  poet  ;  he  does  not  care 
enough  about  anything  ;  he  is  not  consistently  noble  and 
sincere.  Keble  really  means  that  Horace  and  Dryden  are  not, 
in  the  high  sense  of  the  term,  Hligious  ;  for  primary  poetry  and 
religion  are  to  his  mind  not  only  harmonious,  but  almost 
conterminous .  We  hardly  expect  any  other  attitude  from  the 
author  of  The  Christian  Year  ;  but  he  ranges  far  for  his  illus- 
trations ;   he  quotes  not  only  Scripture,  but  the  lay  of  Ragnar 


252  EARLIER  CRITICS 

Lodbrog,  and  the  songs  of  Lapps  and  Polynesians  ;  and  his 
sympathies  are  often  wider  than  his  theories.  His  manner  is 
somewhat  that  of  the  intelligent  pointer-out  of  '  beauties  '  ; 
but  he  does  not  lack  for  subtlety  or  nicety.  Had  his  '  prelec- 
tions '  been  in  English,  Keble  would  at  once  have  taken  his 
just  rank  amongst  the  critics.  His  English  writing,  gathered 
up  in  his  Occasional  Papers  and  Reviews  (1877),  hardly  contain 
enough  critical  matter  to  give  his  measure  ;  but  the  article 
(1838)  on  Sir  Walter  Scott  contains,  in  brief,  a  theory  of  poetry 
and  a  classification  of  poets  almost  identical  with  that  in  the 
prelections . 

George  Brimley.1  (1819-57)  was  librarian  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  and  a  small  sheaf  of  his  periodical  essays,  chiefly 
written  before  1850,  was  reprinted  after  his  death.  Brimley,  in 
his  own  field,  is  a  delicate,  neat-handed  man  of  letters.  He  is 
usually  on  the  defensive  ;  he  tells  the  public,  very  modestly, 
why  it  really  ought  to  like  Tennyson  and  Wordsworth,  and 
Esmond  and  Westward  Ho  !  and  The  Angel  in  the  House,  and 
Shelley  too  ;  and  he  tells  them  in  a  fashion  which  is  not  yet 
antiquated.  On  Shelley  he  is  much  nearer  to  the  truth  than 
Matthew  Arnold.  Not  every  one  could  write  in  1851,  or  in 
1 920  either,  so  much  to  the  purpose  as  this  : 

After  the  passions  and  the  theories  which  supplied  Shelley  with 
the  subject-matter  of  his  poems  have  died  away  and  become  mere 
matters  of  history,  there  will  still  remain  a  song  such  as  mortal 
man  never  sung  before,  of  inarticulate  rapture  and  of  freezing 
pain — of  a  blinding  fight  of  truth  and  a  dazzling  weight  of  glory, 
translated  into  English  speech,  as  coloured  as  a  painted  window, 
as  suggestive,  as  penetrating,  as  intense  as  music. 

Brimley  is  expository  ;  his  essays  would  serve  excellently  to 
introduce  the  poets  to  strangers  ;  but  this  professor-work  is  in 
its  nature  not  original.  He  is  also  extremely  moral — an  idealist 
of  the  kind  that  people  call  '  mid-Victorian,'  although  in  fact 
the  type  is  eternal.  He  shakes  his  head,  with  a  half -unwilling 
admiration,  over  The  Lady  of  Shalott ;  its  '  serene  beauty,'  we 
are  told,  and  '  clear  landscape  features,' 

only  make  one  more  angry  that  so  much  skill  in  presenting  objects 
should  be  employed  upon  a  subject  that  can  only  amuse  the  imagi- 
nation. 

Yet  Brimley,  throughout,  loves  more  things  in  poetry  than  he 
can  well  approve  of.  More  than  once  he  breaks  his  chain  ;  and 
he  must  have  been  one  of  the  first  writers  to  do  full  justice  to 


BRIMLEY— DALLAS  253 

Maud  ;  refusing,  as  he  sturdily  does,  to  be  frightened  by 
those  current  epithets  of  '  morbid  '  and  '  hysterical,'  which 
really  indicate  the  dramatic  virtue  of  the  work.  In  his  paper 
called  Poetry  and  Criticism  he  comes  near  to  adopting  a  free 
disinterested  standard  : 

All,  then,  we  have  to  ask  ourselves  in  reference  to  the  form  of 
any  particular  poem  is,  whether  it  does  so  express  the  emotion  of 
the  writer,  and  what  quality  and  degree  of  emotion  it  expresses — 
that  of  a  great  soul  raised  to  the  height  of  its  subject,  or  of  a  little 
soul  vainly  striving  to  warm  its  thin  blood,  but  pun\T,  starved,  and 
shivering,  even  in  presence  of  the  central  fires  of  the  universe. 

This  is  not  dead  writing,  and  I  hope  it  may  lead  some  reader  to 
reopen  Brimley's  pages.  But  he  produced  little,  and  his  range 
is  not  considerable ,  and  his  subjects  are  nearly  all  English .  Even 
while  Brimley  was  discoursing  Matthew  Arnold  had  begun  to 
preach  the  Greek  harmony  of  structure,  and  the  grand  style  of 
Homer  and  his  peers. 

The  author  of  a  singular  book,  The  Gay  Science  (1866),  now 
too  little  remembered,  Eneas  Sweetland  Dallas  (1828-79),  is 
much  more  of  a  philosopher,  if  less  of  a  critic,  than  Brimley. 
The  '  gay  science  '  is  the  science  of  criticism,  the  term  being 
transferred  from  its  original,  Provencal  sense  of  the  craft  of 
poetry.  Dallas,  with  Matthew  Arnold's  proclamation  in  his 
ears  that  the  movement  of  the  time  is  '  critical,'  seeks  to  found 
the  science  on  first  principles  ;  and,  after  many  a  circuit,  he 
concludes  that  since  the  end  of  art  is  pleasure,  as  Aristotle 
said,  and  not  edification,  or  mere  imitation,  the  science  of 
criticism  must  first  of  all  be  the  science  of  pleasure.  So  he 
plunges  back  into  psychology  and  aesthetic,  showing  much 
reading  and  shrewdness  by  the  way,  but  often  going  off  at 
tangents  ;  and  ends  in  a  most  acute  disquisition  on  the  '  mixed  ' 
pleasure  involving  pain,  which  is  inherent  in  drama  (comedy  as 
well  as  tragedy),  on  the  '  pure  '  and  painless  pleasure  given  by 
many  kinds  of  art  (such  as  U  Allegro),  and  finally  on  the  '  hidden 
pleasure,'  which  issues  from  the  '  hidden  soul,'  and  speaks  to, 
or  from,  the  depths  of  unconscious  experience.  Mystical  verse 
like  Wordsworth's  Tintern  lines  gives  this  kind  of  pleasure. 
The  sequel,  which  includes  a  defence  of  fine  art  against  the 
charge  of  mendacity,  is  less  interesting,  and  is  indeed  slaying  the 
slain  ;  but  it  would  be  hard  to  name  any  one  who  has  attacked 
the  problem  of  artistic  enjoyment  at  precisely  the  same  angle  as 
Dallas.  He  is  a  very  lively,  in  fact  a  discursive  and  jerky 
writer  ;   he  hardly  ever  gets  to  literature  itself  ;   he  does  not 


254    EARLIER  CRITICS  :    AND  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

exactly  get  to  anything ;  but  he  throws  by  the  way  a  sharp 
light  on  the  plot  of  ground  that  is  common  to  aesthetic,  to 
psychology,  and  to  ethics.  Herein  his  work  is  still  fresh.  In 
his  emphasis  on  the  '  unconscious  '  he  is  an  avowed  disciple  of 
Sir  William  Hamilton  ;  and  we  trace  in  Dallas  everywhere  the 
infection  of  Matthew  Arnold's  pronouncement  that  poetry  and 
letters  are,  or  should  be,  or  may  become,  the  most  important 
things  in  the  world. 

II 

Our  review  of  the  poets  must  here  be  partially  anticipated. 
It  would  do  wrong  to  Matthew  Arnold  (1822-88)  *  to  sever  his 
prose,  which  is  so  often  that  of  a  poet,  from  his  verse,  into 
which  the  thoughts  and  the  temper  of  his  prose — and  sometimes, 
alas!  its  movement — continually  find  their  way.  We  must  here 
study  both  together,  in  order  to  see  what  he  has  to  say  and  to 
discover  some  of  the  influences  that  went  to  his  making. 
Speaking  of  Byron,  Matthew  Arnold  says  that  he  himself  was 
old  enough  '  to  have  felt  the  expiring  wave  of  that  mighty 
influence.'  Yet  only  the  spray  of  the  wave  reached  him.  He 
speaks  of  Byron  with  more  admiration  than  sympathy  ;  he 
stood  well  outside  Byronism.  Matthew  Arnold  had  his  own 
quarrel  with  the  world  as  he  found  it  ;  but  Byronism  revolted 
against  the  conditions  of  life  itself.  He  obeyed  the  precept  of 
Carry le  :  '  Close  thy  Byron,  open  thy  Goethe  '  ;  Goethe,  the 
wise  man  who  '  bade  us  hope,'  and  who  was  full  of  counsels 
upon  life  and  conduct.  This  was  the  Goethe  whom  Matthew 
Arnold  '  opened  '  as  Carlyle  had  done  before  him  ;  but  he 
opened  another  Goethe  too,  about  whom  Carlyle  cared  much 
less  ;  and  this  was  the  poet  of  Iphigenie,  the  man  who  had  turned 
to  the  Greeks,  and  had  attained  something  of  the  symmetria 
prison,  and  was  the  apostle  of  form,  and  sculpturing,  and  artistic 
self-restraint.  Matthew  Arnold,  however,  was  more  affected 
by  the  Greeks  themselves  than  he  was  by  Goethe  ;  and  by  the 
Greeks  he  meant,  we  find,  chiefly  Homer  and  Sophocles,  and  in 
some  degree  Theocritus.  This  influence  was  profound  in  its 
way,  but  the  strongest  one  of  all  was  nearer  home  ;  it  was  that 
of  Wordsworth.  Matthew  Arnold  ranked  Wordsworth  extra- 
vagantly high  amongst  European  poets  ;  bore  witness  to  his 
'  healing  power  '  ;  and  repeatedly,  as  we  find,  in  his  sonnets  and 
in  Mycerinus,  follows  Wordsworth's  poetic  style.  But  he  was 
most  of  all  affected  by  the  Bible  ;  and  the  forces  which  made 
him,  if  they  can  be  named  in  the  order  of  their  importance,  I 
take  to  be,  first  of  all,  the  Bible  and  Wordsworth  ;   and,  next 


ANTI-ROMANTIC— HIS  PURPOSE  255 

to  these,  the  Greeks  and  Goethe.  Many  other  things  told  upon 
him  powerfully  ;  amongst  them  the  poetry  of  Milton,  and 
certain  masters  of  French  prose,  notably  Sainte-Beuve  ;  but 
these,  after  all.  were  secondary  in  importance.  And  all  the 
time,  receptive  as  he  is,  by  nature  and  also  on  principle,  Matthew 
Arnold  is  still  himself,  with  a  mind  and  a  tune  of  his  own — 
ein  eigenste  Gesang. 

He  began,  both  as  poet  and  critic,  by  rejecting  the  former 
generation.  He  was  afterwards  to  speak  nobly  of  Keats 
and  handsomely  of  Byron  ;  but  against  the  romantic  move- 
ment in  England,  though  himself  one  of  its  children,  he  rebelled , 
He  found  a  deficiency  of  substance,  and  of  satisfactory  '  subject  - 
matter,'  in  its  productions ;  nor  was  he  always  content  with 
'Wordsworth  even,  profound  as  he  is,  yet  so  wanting  in  com- 
pleteness and  variety.'  He  disliked  no  less  the  romantic 
looseness  of  structure  and  excess  of  imagery  ;  and  he  found  the 
romantic  dissatisfaction  with  life  a  sterile  mood.  And  in  his 
poetry  Matthew  Arnold  tries  to  make  all  these  defects  good, 
while  in  his  prose  he  tries  to  prescribe  for  the  mental  maladies 
that  produce  them.  The  poet  must  find  something  great  and 
sound  and  real  to  write  about  ;  he  must  have  plastic  power,  or 
a  command  of  structure  ;  and  he  must  possess  a  great,  or  an 
adequate,  poetic  style.  The  critic,  on  the  other  hand,  and  the 
man  of  culture,  must  find  their  food  and  medicine  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  great  style  itself  ;  in  the  study  of  many 
literatures,  and  of  the  '  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  ' ; 
and  further,  in  the  discipline  of  impartial  thinking,  or  of 
striving  'to  see  the  object  as  it  really  is.'  Matthew  Arnold's 
own  labours  were  dispersed,  but  this  is  the  underlying  purpose 
that  gives  them  unity. 

He  paid,  no  doubt,  for  his  purpose  ;  he  paid  for  it  as  a  poet, 
when  it  makes  him  flag  and  become  dull,  as  it  does  in  Merope  ; 
and  he  paid  for  it  also  as  a  critic.  We  often  want  to  call  him  a 
bad,  great  critic  ;  he  is  a  great  critic — when  he  is  a  good  one. 
It  was  his  purpose,  his  moral  and  spiritual  purpose,  that  made 
him  unjust  to  Carlyle,1  Shelley,  Victor  Hugo,  Charlotte  Bronte, 
and  Tennyson.  He  found  it  hard  to  like  writers  who  seemed  to 
ignore  the  ideal  which  he  had  set  before  himself,  or  who  dis- 
concerted the  missionary  twist  in  his  composition.  But  then 
the  very  same  purpose  gives  to  his  judgements,  when  they  are 
true  and  sound — his  judgements  of  Homer,  on  Dante,  and  on 
Milton — much  of  their  value  and  inspiriting  power.  It  is  a 
relief  to  find  that  when  he  is  wrong,  as  he  is  about  Shelley,  he  is 
wrong  beyond  recovery,  and   without   qualification.     In  the 


256  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

same  way,  as  a  poet  he  is  seldom  mediocre  ;  he  is  either  musical 
or  unmusical,  seldom  nearly  musical ;  and  either  Apollo  visits 
him  and  carries  him  off,  or  else  Apollo  deserts  him,  finding 
that  one  '  haunt '  in  particular  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  namely 
the  pulpit,  is  by  no  means  '  meet  '  for  Apollo. 

Humourist  as  he  was,  with  a  streak  of  Horace  in  his  nature, 
Matthew  Arnold  would  have  made  excellent  fun  of  the  picture 
of  himself  as  a  person  drearily  prosing  away  in  verse  as  well  as 
in  prose,  in  the  hopes  of  saving  a  stray  soul  in  a  sleepy  congre- 
gation.    He  knew  quite  well  that  a  writer  must  please  ;   lie  is 
always  talking  about  charm,  and  urbanity,  and  delicacy,  and 
good  temper,  and  he  had  these  qualities  himself,  along  with  a 
certain  cheerful  insolence  too .    Still,  he  regarded  them  at  bottom 
as  a  means  of  winning  men  to  moral  and  intellectual  virtue, 
and  Matthew  Arnold's  glory  is  to  have  commended  this  purpose 
so  well ;    but  there  is  something  he  misses,  something  which 
can  best  be  indicated  by  attending  to  the  accent  in  which  he 
speaks  about  beauty.     He  is  constantly  referring  to  the  '  laws 
of  beauty,'  and  to  the  '  Greek  instinct  for  beauty.'     And  he 
deeply  felt,  and  he  could  sometimes  create  and  command,  both 
the  grander  and  austerer  sort  of  beauty,  and  the  more  gracious, 
simple,  and  holiday  sort.     It  is  the  beauty  of  Pallas  and  Hera, 
or  else  that  of  the  guardian  gods  of  woods  and  streams,  of  '  Flora 
and  the  country  green,'  of  Cumnor  and  Isis.    Aphrodite  is  not 
there,  nor  the  song  of  Pan  ;    nor  yet  any  mixed  and  strange 
divinities  of  doubtful  loveliness.     So  that  the   word  beauty 
sounds  quite  differently  on  his  lips,  and  on  those  of  Rossetti,  or 
of  Walter  Pater,  or  even  of  Keats,  who  can  abandon  himself 
to  sight  and  sound  in  a  way  which  Matthew  Arnold  is  hardly 
capable  of  doing.     No  doubt,  by  meaner  men,  such  words  as 
beauty  and  beautiful  came  to  be  made  repulsive  or  ridiculous, 
and  were  fair  game  for  Messrs.  Gilbert  and  Sullivan,  and  for 
Punch.    We  may  not  ourselves  care  to  repeat  them  too  often ; 
but  they  are  the  sacred  words  of  a  true  religion  nevertheless. 
Matthew  Arnold's  sacred  words,  however,  are  different ;  they 
are  conduct  and  righteousness  in  the  first  place  ;    and,  in  the 
second,  expressions  of  his  own  coinage  like  '  culture  '  or  '  sweet- 
ness and  light.'     I  am  not  judging  between  these  two  creeds, 
or  points  of  view,  but  merely  marking  a  difference.     Matthew 
Arnold  repeated  his  holy  words  continually,  and  made  them 
pass  current  ;   which,  in  the  approving  words  of  Disraeli,  was 
'  a  great  achievement.'     He  repeated  them,  and  set  people  by 
the  ears  over  them,  much  to  his  satisfaction  ;    and  then  they 
began  to  be  worn  out  of  shape,  and  to  become  tiresome,  so 


CHRONOLOGY  257 

that  it  takes  some  courage  to-day  to  revive  them,  and  to  urge 
how  much  truth  and  value  is  really  to  be  found  in  them.  But 
they  too  represent  a  genuine  religion,  a  religion  in  which  the 
severity  of  the  ruling  idea,  that  of  conduct  and  righteousness, 
is  softened  and  reinforced  by  the  ideas  of  charm,  of  balance, 
and  of  trained  intellectual  integrity.  Who  can  say  that  these 
conceptions  are  done  with,  or  that  we  can  all  take  them  for 
granted  ? 

Ill 

Matthew  Arnold  was  a  critic  almost  as  soon  as  he  was  a  poet ; 
and,  in  spite  of  his  later  verse  like    Westminster  Abbey  and 
Geist's  Grave,  it  is  fair  to  say  that  he  remained  a  critic  longer 
than  he  remained  a  poet.     Some  chronology  must  now   be 
pardoned  :  for  it  will  show  how  through  many  years  he  was 
writing  his  best   'with  both  hands.'     Apart  from  collegiate 
prize  pieces,  his  first  volume  was  The  Strayed  Reveller,  and  Other 
Poems,  by  A.  (1849).     It  was  soon  withdrawn,  though  it  con- 
tained the  sonnet  to  Shakespeare  and  The  Forsaken  Merman  ; 
and  so,  too,  was  Empedocles  on  Etna,  and  Other  Poems,  by  A. 
(1852),  although  in  this  volume  were  Tristram  and  Iseult,  and 
the  Lines  written  in  Kensington  Gardens.    The  Poems  of  1853 
bear  the  author's  name,  and  include  a  selection  from  the  earlier 
books   (though  not  Empedocles),  as  well  as  new  pieces  like 
Sohrab  and  Rustum,  the  beautiful  Church  of  Brou,  and  The 
Scholar-Gipsy.    And  there  is  the  noteworthy  Preface,  the  first 
of  Matthew  Arnold's  statements  of  poetic  theory,  and  one  of 
the  clearest  and  the  best.     More  Poems  followed  in  1855,  in- 
cluding Balder  Dead  and  Resignation  ;  and,  in  1858,  the  tragedy 
of  Merope,  with  another  closely  reasoned  preface.     He  was  now 
Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford,  and  held  the  chair  until  1867, 
for  ten  years. 

During  the  Sixties  Matthew  Arnold's  powers  were  at  their 
fullest.  He  gave,  and  in  1861  published,  his  Lectures  on  Trans- 
lating Homer,  followed  a  year  later  by  his  Last  Words  on  that 
topic.  In  1867  appeared  the  Lectures  on  the  Study  of  Celtic 
Literature  ;  the  first  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism,  originally 
magazine  articles,  having  preceded  them  in  1865.  The  precious 
New  Poems  (1867)  contained  the  rescued  Empedocles,  besides 
Thyrsis,  Dover  Beach,  Rugby  Chapel,  Heine's  Grave,  and  other 
delightful  things  ;  indeed  all  in  that  little  book  is  good.  Some 
of  the  threads  which  unite  Matthew  Arnold's  poetry  with  his 
criticism  will  appear  presently.  But  first  the  poems  may  be 
classified,  following  the  author's  own  division,  into  narrative, 
vol.  I.  it 


258  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

dramatic,  elegiac,  lyrical,  and  sonnets  ;  and  out  of  these  groups 
may  be  separated  one  other,  conveniently  called  associative, 
which  tells  us  most  of  all  about  the  writer  himself. 

Two  of  the  stories,  Sohrab  and  Rustum  and  Balder  Dead,  have 
the  character  of  heroic  episodes  ;  and  in  both  of  them  Matthew 
Arnold  follows  the  antique  model  as  devoutly  as  any  poet  of 
the  Renaissance.  Both  are  designed  to  be  Homeric,  in  sub- 
ject, temper,  plan,  and  diction ;  but  Virgil,  and  scenery,  and 
pathos  are  always  breaking  in.  They  have  a  similar  scheme, 
the  same  sort  of  blank  verse,  and  the  same  virtues.  Balder 
Dead,  for  which  Arnold  had  his  special  liking,  is  dignified  ; 
but  Sohrab  and  Rustum  is  the  more  concise  and  the  more  alive 
of  the  two.  It  is  perhaps  not  quite  alive,  as  we  may  feel 
by  applying  the  author's  own  test.  '  Everything  depends 
upon  the  subject  '  ;  and,  as  King  Edward  the  Seventh  is  re- 
puted to  have  said  to  a  student  of  Shakespeare,  '  You  could 
not  have  chosen  a  better  subject.'  But  then  who  reads  Sohrab 
for  the  subject,  or  for  the  story  ?  The  poetry,  where  it  tells 
the  story,  hardly  rises  to  its  full  level ; — only  once,  it  may  be, 
and  that  is  when  Sohrab's  soul  departs, 

Regretting  the  warm  mansion  which  it  left, 
And  youth,  and  bloom,  and  this  delightful  world. 

No,  it  is  read  for  '  beauties  '  and  descriptions  ;  for  the 
Miltonic  use  of  melodious  names,  Aralian,  Afrasiab,  Kai  Khos- 
roo ;  for  the  simile  of  the  diver,  and  the  picture  of  the  Oxus, 
which  is  none  the  less  perfect  for  being  unlike  the  Greek 
manner.  Tristram  and  Iseult,  though  noble  in  spirit,  fails 
in  essential  passion ;  nor  are  the  style  and  subject  so  nearly 
harmonised  as  in  The  Sick  King  in  Bokhara :  where  the  style 
is  natural  and  fluent,  not  epically  draped  at  all,  and  prepares 
us  for  that  of  The  Earthly  Paradise  : 

'  Now  I  at  nightfall  had  gone  forth 
Alone,  and  in  a  darksome  place 
Under  some  mulberry-trees  I  found 
A  little  pool ;  and  in  short  space 
With  all  the  water  that  was  there 
I  fill'd  my  pitcher,  and  stole  home 
Unseen ;  and  having  drink  to  spare, 
I  hid  the  can  behind  the  door, 
And  went  up  on  the  roof  to  sleep.' 

As  for  The  Forsaken  Merman,  which  is  not  a  story,  but  a  chant 
involving  a  story,  its  grace  and  half -human  pathos  make  it  a 


EMPEDOCLES  ON  ETNA  259 

very  rare  thing  ;  and  further  (what  does  not  always  happen 
with  Matthew  Arnold)  the  tune  and  the  words,  both  of  them 
almost  perfect,  are  born  together. 

The  Preface  of  1853  explains  why  he  had  suppressed  Empe- 
docles  on  Etna,  which  was  saved  at  the  instance  of  Robert 
Browning.  The  subject  was  wrong — almost,  we  might  be  led 
to  fear,  morally  wrong.  Wrong,  because  the  reflections  of  Em- 
pedocles,  instead  of  leading  to  anything,  except  to  the  plunge  in 
the  crater,  eddy  round  and  round  inconclusively  ;  '  the  suffering 
finds  no  vent  in  action  '  ;  or,  as  Matthew  Arnold  put  it  in  a 
letter,  '  everything  is  to  be  endured,  nothing  to  be  done  '  ; 
whereas  a  poem,  especially  one  that  calls  itself  dramatic,  ought 
not  so  to  behave .  Dramatic  Empedocles  is  not  ;  but  the  future 
writer  of  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  might  well  perceive  its  special  excellence . 
The  philosophic  lyric  that  forms  the  centrepiece  is  as  rugged 
and  jagged,  and  as  full  of  matter,  as  anything  of  his  own.  Some 
of  it  strays  into  unduly  metrical  prose.  But  the  ruggedness 
befits  the  matter  ;  you  could  not  have  a  suave  Empedocles. 
This  lyric  embodies  many  of  the  thoughts  which  beset  Matthew 
Arnold  himself,  and  which  recur  in  his  verses.  Age  brings 
the  decay  not  only  of  pleasures — to  these,  indeed,  we  had  never 
any  right — but  of  intellectual  hope  and  of  faith  in  the  gods. 

The  COnclusWl  ^'  fIlQ+  ™^  r^"^  mpasnrP  nnr  aims  hy  rpn.lif.ipg , 
nortfnrm  inwardly  Iff  t.bA  gfArr>  1aw  nf  llfp  ""^  nf4  *h**e  OUT 
effort.  Empedocles  finds  the  strife  on  such  fprms  TrnpnssihiP, 
and  pemhes_j  but  not  so  Matthew  Arnold  himself,  who  was  to 
work  out  afaith  of  his  own  of  a  different  complexion.  The 
setting  is  valley  and  mountain,  the  accompaniment  is  the 
songs  of  Callicles.  The  blank  verse,  describing  here  the 
Sicilian  slopes,  and  there  the  days  of  ; youth  in  the  Italian  - 
cities — which  surely  are  Trinity,  and  Balliol,  and  Oriel,  and 
Corpus — is  of  Matthew  Arnold's  best,  and  is  free  from  the 
touch  of  consciousness  which  attends  that  measure  in  «his 
epical  experiments.  Many  traits  and  thoughts  of  the  historical 
Empedocles  x  are  inlaid  in  the  poem  ;  the  wandering  mind  of 
man  which  only  mirrors  the  world  in  fragments,  the  purga- 
torial transmigration  of  the  human  spirit  through  the  elements, 
the  evil  lot  of  our  life.  But  Matthew  Arnold  builds  onfall 
this    a;cjved_oi_j&^^  Eis     favourite 

Marcus~15ureTIusEQore  than  it  does  the  ejected  democrat  of 
Agrigentum. 


260  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

IV 

In  Thyrsis,  Matthew  Arnold's  only  elegy  in  the  traditional 
form,  he  is  safe,  musically  and  plaintively  piping  down  in  the 
water-meadows.  There  is  no  knottiness,  inherent  in  the  very 
thought,  to  be  got  over  ;  the  difficult  stave,  which  is  that  of  the 
earlier  Scholar-Gipsy,  is  nobly  invented  ;  and  the  Oxford 
country,  which  already  had  been  happily  limned  by  Faber, 
finds  its  destined  artist .  Some  thought  that  there  was  too  little 
about  Clough,  and  this  idea  occurred  to  Arnold  himself;  but 
Clough's  ghost  is  there  all  the  while,  though  his  bones  are  in 
Florence.  Together  they  watch  the  Tree  on  Foxcombe  Hill, 
together  they  mark  the  traces  of  '  our  Scholar.'  We  think 
of  Clough's  own  verse,  of  his  eye  for  a  different  sort  of  landscape, 
in  The  Bothie  of  Tober-na-Vuolich ;  'he  had,'  wrote  Matthew 
Arnold,  'this  idyllic  side  too.'  The  Scholar -Gipsy,  Joseph 
Glanvill's  gipsy,  haunts  both  poems  ;  but  the  earlier  one  is  the 
more  symbolic,  though  the  symbolism  is  not  obtrusive,  and  it  is 
the  more  widely  imaginative  of  the  two.  In  style  and  execution 
the  poems  match,  as  they  are  meant  to  do  ;  and,  for  single 
strokes  of  magnificence,  it  is  easy  to  confront 

Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade 
with 

The  morningless  and  unawakening  sleep 
Under  the  flowery  oleanders  pale. 

Thyrsis  is  a  true  elegy  ;  and  so,  on  another  scale,  are  the 
beautiful  Heinesque  Requiescdt,  and  the  lines  of  piety  on  the 
author's  brother,  A  Southern  Night.  But  elegy  and  lyric  fade 
off  into  the  form,  itself  of  no  little  range  and  variety,  which  I 
have  called  associative  poetry,  where  the  ethical  and  reflective 
element  easily  overpowers  the  elegiac,  and  which  circles  round 
a  place,  or  a  person,  or  both  ;  such  as  the  Grande  Chartreuse,  or 
Haworth  and  the  Brontes,  or  Montmartre  and  Heine,  or  Rugby 
and  Thomas  Arnold.  Some  of  these  subjects  might  seem  more 
tractable  in  prose ;  and  might  have  gone  better,  with  only  a  touch 
or  two  changed  into  one  of  Matthew  Arnold's  skilful,  numerous 
periods,  instead  of  into  verse  which  is  sometimes  uncertain,  and, 
to  speak  frankly,  jaw-breaking  : 

But  something  prompts  me :  Not  thus 

Take  leave  of  Heine,  not  thus 

Speak  the  last  word  at  his  grave ! 

Not  in  pity  and  not 

With  half  censure — with  awe 

Hail,  as  it  passes  from  earth 

Scattering  lightnings,  that  soul ! 


GRANDEUR  261 

This  painful  effect  occurs  above  all  in  the  metre,  of  triple  beat 
and  unrhymed,  which  Matthew  Arnold  seems  to  have  invented, 
and  which  he  likes  to  use  for  intimate  utterance.  Its  danger 
is  ungainliness  ;  but  '  the  strong  passion,'  it  has  been  well  said,1 
'  fuses  it  '  into  '  something  grave  and  noble  in  Rugby  Chapel' 
There  the  metre  turns  to  a  slow  marching  or  climbing  chant, 
comparable  to  that  of  A  Grammarian's  Funeral,  as  the  thinned 
mountaineers,  after  the  journey  of  life,  come  at  last  '  to  the 
lonely  inn  'mid  the  rocks.'  To  grandeur  of  spirit  Matthew 
Arnold  often  approaches,  to  grandeur  of  form  less  often  ;  but 
here  the  form  responds.  And  it  responds  again,  in  another 
way,  in  the  Fragment  of  a  Chorus  of  a  '  Dejaneira,'  which  is  in  a 
style  that  would  serve  well  for  a  translation  of  Sophocles  ; 
and  in  Dover  Beach,  with  the  Lycidas-hke  rhymes  on  '  the  sea 
of  faith  '  with  '  its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar.' 

Others  of  these  poems  are  in  stanzas  that  lend  themselves  to 
the  panel-pictures — something  like  Tennyson's,  but  simpler 
and  more  straightforward — in  which  Matthew  Arnold  excels  : 

And  the  domed  Velan  with  his  snows 

Behind  the  upcrowding  hills 
Doth  all  the  heavenly  opening  close 

Which  the  Rhone's  murmur  fills. 

These  Alpine  passages  in  Obermann  once  More,  and  those  too 
in  Stanzas  from  the  Grande  Chartreuse,  are  true  poetry,  while 
the  verses  on  the  Roman  noble,  and  on  Byron  and  Shelley, 
which  show  the  same  kind  of  skill,  are  but  splendid  poetic 
eloquence.  Both  pieces  reveal  the  solitary-mindedness  of  the 
writer,  and  his  disenchanted  romanticism.  Romance  has  gone, 
faith  has  gone,  a  new  faith  has  not  come,  and  there  is  no 
spiritual  resting-place,  not  even — nay,  not  at  all — in  monastic 
peace.  And  the  lines  portraying  the  work  achieved  by  Christ 
in  the  world  anticipate  the  tone  of  Matthew  Arnold's  theological 
prose  ;  and  the  tolerance,  which  there  also  we  find,  towards 
the  old  faith  has  its  root  in  poetic  rather  than  intellectual 
sympathy.  There  is  plenty  of  mountain  air,  too,  in  Obermann 
and  the  Stanzas,  but  never  so  much  lyrical  energy  as  in  the 
earlier  series  called  Switzerland ;  which,  be  it  a  record  of 
experience  or  no,  is  full  of  young,  direct,  and  genuine  emotion, 
and  which  contains  at  least  one  outburst — '  Yes  !  in  the  sea  of 
life  enisled,'  which  is  passionate  and  resonant  beyond  Matthew 
Arnold's  habit. 

As  to  his  lyrical  faculty,  which  seldom  reaches  the  point  of 
singing,  and  is  always  being  arrested  by  thinking,  and  too  rarely 
sweeps  the  thought  along  with  it — this  faculty,  it  may  be, 


262  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

works  most  freely  at  unexpected  points,  for  instance  when  it  is 
turned  to  the  utterance  of  indignation  : 

Charge  once  more,  then,  and  be  dumb  ! 
Let  the  victors,  when  they  come, 
When  the  forts  of  folly  fall, 
Find  thy  body  by  the  wall ! 

This  is  a  ringing  cry,  as  of  a  '  soldier  in  the  Liberation  War  of 
humanity  '  ;  and  the  religion  of  culture  would  be  none  the 
worse  for  a  little  more  of  it.  Though  smothered  up  in  his 
praises  of  sweetness  and  urbanity,  it  is  a  strain  ever-latent  in 
Matthew  Arnold.  It  breaks  out  again  in  A  Wish,  where  he 
prays  that  in  his  last  hour  he  may  keep  away  from  the  doctor 
and  also  from  '  his  brother  doctor  of  the  soul.'  The  wish  was 
granted  in  a  sense,  for  he  died  suddenly,  near  the  Mersey  and 
the  '  wide  aerial  landscape  spread.'  There  is  another  kind  of 
sharpness  in  the  lines  entitled  Old,  published  when  he  was  but 
forty-five  ;  they  forecast  a  palsy  and  apathy  of  spirit  of  which 
he  was  never  to  be  in  danger.  The  more  usual  note  of  lyric  is 
struck  happily,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  songs  of  Calhcles  and 
The  Forsaken  Merman  and  in  Requiescat.  Matthew  Arnold  had 
sometimes  to  contend  with  a  certain  imperfection  of  ear  ;  he  is 
capable  of  such  a  hissing  line  as  '  My  melancholy,  sciolists  say.' 
But  then  this  defect  has  been  much  exaggerated  ;  his  idea  often 
demands  a  discord  of  sound  ;  and  his  real  defect  is  not  that 
he  is  unmusical,  but  that  the  turn  and  movement  of  his  verse  are 
apt  to  be  those  of  high  prose  rather  than  of  poetry,  so  that  the 
presence  of  verse  strikes  Us  as  accidental.  Unawares,  he  speaks 
rather  than  chants.  But  his  best  things  are  not  thus  disabled 
at  all ;  and  on  his  own  upland  of  contemplative,  intellectually 
impassioned  poetry,  and  in  purity  of  tone  and  colour,  he  has 
few  companions. 

Not  all  the  best  of  his  sonnets  are  inspired  by  Wordsworth. 
The  greatest  of  them,  though  not  verbally  perfect,  is  still  that 
on  Shakespeare.  It  contains  none  of  the  critical  reserves  which 
always  weaken  poetry  ;  and  there  is  no  cult  in  it — nothing  about 
the  value  of  poetry  for  the  higher  life,  or  the  equivalence  of 
poetry  and  religion.  The  spirit  of  it  is  '  free,'  and  therefore  the 
less  '  abides  our  question.'  The  third  sonnet,  on  Rachel  ('Sprung 
from  the  blood  of  Israel's  scatter'd  race  '),  has  some  of  the  same 
quality  ;  but  Austerity  of  Poetry  and  East  London  are  the  most 
harmoniously  built  of  those  in  the  orthodox  form. 


SCENERY  2&3r 


So  far  as  we  can  judge,  there  was  a  singular  and  happy 
absence  of  dark  corners  in  Matthew  Arnold's  nature  and 
imagination.  Indignation  is  there,  and  satire,  and  melancholy  ; 
yet  there  is  nothing  of  the  strain  which  we  find  in  every  other 
poet  of  the  same  time  or  rank — in  such  work  as  Guido 
Franceschini,  or  The  Bride's  Prelude,  or  Faustine.  He  felt 
'  the  sick  hurry,  the  divided  aim,'  and  how  the  time  was  out  of 
joint  ;  but  there  are  many  kinds  of  fever  of  which  he  must 
have  had  little  apprehension,  as  may  be  guessed  if  we  compare 
his  Empedocles  with  Tennyson's  Lucretius.  Nor  does  he  show 
any  liking  for  this  element  in  the  work  of  others.  This 
deficiency  is  one  of  Matthew  Arnold's  great  charms.  When 
we  have  had  enough  of  tragedy  or  pathology,  it  is  a  relief  to 
turn  and  listen  to  his  pure,  sound  strain  : 

Thin,  thin  the  pleasant  human  noises  grow, 

And  faint  the  city  gleams ; 

Rare  the  lone  pastoral  huts — marvel  not  thou  ! 

The  solemn  peaks  but  to  the  stars  are  known, 

But  to  the  stars,  and  the  cold  lunar  beams ; 

Alone  the  sun  arises,  and  alone 

Spring  the  great  streams. 

The  passage  is  from  an  early  piece  ;  the  distinctive  mood 
and  style  are  soon  perceptible  ;  and  so,  too,  is  another  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  traits,  his  special  intimacy  with  nature,  and 
his  power  of  making  nature  poetical.  This  is  found  in  his 
prose  also.  In  the  essay  on  George  Sand  there  is  a  page  on 
the  river -country  of  Berry,  with  its  '  shelving  gravel  and  yellow 
wagtails,'  which  has  the  charm  of  Thyrsis.  The  East  he  had 
not  visited,  but  those  who  knew  it  praised  the  veracity  of  the 
descriptions,  taken  from  books,  in  Sohrab  and  Rustum.  Still, 
in  spite  of  the  '  beds  of  sand  and  matted  rushy  isles  '  of  the 
Oxus,  the  landscape  is  of  necessity  more  general  than  it  is  in 
the  Swiss  or  English  poems .  And  of  these  the  foreign  pictures 
are  the  more  rapidly  done,  and  have  the  movement  of  travel 
in  them  ;  but  the  Thames  valley,  long  known  and  haunted, 
is  Matthew  Arnold's  chosen  plot,  and  he  has  given  eyes  to 
those  who  knew  it  already.  It  is  here  natural  to  think  of 
Tennyson  ;  and,  while  both  poets  are  at  their  best  in  this 
kind  of  work,  Tennyson,  with  his  concentrated  vision,  gives 
us,  at  the  end  of  it,  the  pleasure  of  '  many  a  golden  phrase,' 
always  a  little  curious  ;  but  Matthew  Arnold  is  the  more  trans- 
parent in  his  language,  and  so  makes  us  think  less  about  the 


264  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

words  and  more  of  the  object.  His  simplicity  seems  no  trouble 
to  him,  and  there  is  no  lack  of  air  and  colour  : 

Men  who  through  those  wide  fields  of  breezy  grass 
Where  black-wing'd  swallows  haunt  the  glittering  Thames, 
To  bathe  in  the  abandon'd  lasher  pass. 

But  with  all  their  differences  the  two  poets,  considered  as 
painters,  have  this  in  common,  that  they  are  more  English 
than  anybody,  as  English  as  Constable.  In  English  scenery, 
said  Alfred  de  Vigny,  we  feel  everywhere  the  hand  of  man  ; 
tant  mieux ;  partout  ailleurs  la  nature  stwpide  nous  insulte  assez. 
The  same  gift,  however,  is  found  in  The  Church  of  Brou,1  which 
the  poet,  as  he  afterwards  said,  '  found  he  had  described 
wrongly  '  ;  for  the  pines  and  valleys  of  the  poem  are  not  at 
Brou  at  all,  but  in  Edgar  Quinet's  prose,  whence  Arnold  took 
the  description  only.  Yet  it  is  one  of  his  noblest  things,  and 
and  he  never  wrote  better  rhymed  verse  : 

So  sleep,  for  ever  sleep,  O  marble  Pair ! 
Or,  if  ye  wake,  let  it  be  then,  when  fair 
On  the  carved  western  front  a  flood  of  light 
Streams  from  the  setting  sun,  and  colours  bright 
Prophets,  transfigured  saints,  and  martyrs  brave, 
In  the  vast  western  window  of  the  nave. 

VI 

The  examples  of  Homer  and  Sophocles  He  behind  much  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  criticism,  as  they  do  behind  some  of  his 
poetry  ;  and  so,  we  should  add,  do  the  examples  of  Dante  and 
Milton.  These  are  the  masters  who  bring  him  to  insist  first 
of  all  on  the  necessity  of  design,  proportion,  and  wholeness  in 
a  poem,  and  then  on  the  continued  presence  of  the  grand, 
or  at  least  of  the  high  style,  or  else  of  one  that  has  charm  and 
magic.  They  also  bring  him  to  insist  on  poetry  being  a  '  criti- 
cism of  life.'  These  are  the  three  great  articles  of  his  creed  ; 
he  draws  many  lines  of  connexion  between  them,  and  it  is 
easy  to  misunderstand  them  apart. 

It  was  no  new  thing  to  preach  structure  and  unity.  The 
Renaissance,  with  its  eye  on  the  great  old  models,  had  done 
so  ;  and  though  Matthew  Arnold  did  not  study  the  Renais- 
sance much — indeed,  was  shy  of  it — still  he  is  obeying  one  of  its 
ruling  passions,  and  is  therein  a  true  man  of  the  Renaissance. 
But  ages  had  come  between.  The  neo-classical  centuries  had 
worshipped  structure,  building  on  Aristotle  with  an  almost 
theological  licence,  and  disguising  his  teaching  almost  out  of 


HOMER  265 

knowledge.  But  the  result  became  petrified  and  pedantic  ; 
the  rules  of  tragedy,  the  rules  of  the  epic,  had  reduced  them- 
selves to  absurdities,  and  the  world  grew  sick  of  them.  Lessing 
did  something  to  explode  them.  The  strongest  heads  of  the 
'  age  of  prose,'  such  as  Johnson,  in  the  end  gave  them  up.  The 
romantic  age  followed  ;  and  Coleridge  renewed  the  concep- 
tion of  unity  and  design  in  a  larger  sense,  finding  those  qualities 
not  as  imposed  by  rule,  but  as  developed  through  a  living  in- 
herent law,  in  Shakespeare.  But  the  romantic  poets  them- 
selves, in  their  longer  and  more  imposing  works,  forgot  these 
virtues  again,  as  may  be  seen  in  The  Prelude,  Prometheus  Un- 
bound, and  Don  Juan  ;  in  the  last  of  these,  indeed,  the  absence 
of  design  is  part  of  the  programme.  It  is  in  well-made  works 
of  the  middle  scale,  like  The  Ancient  Mariner  or  Michael,  that 
these  virtues  do  appear  and  shine  ;  and,  still  more,  in  shorter 
works  like  the  odes  of  Keats  or  the  lyrics  of  Shelley.  The  Lines 
Written  among  the  Euganean  Hills  have  a  true  pattern  and  unity 
of  their  own. 

Well,  Matthew  Arnold,  nursed  on  the  Greeks  and  Dante,  and 
reacting,  as  we  have  seen,  against  many  things  in  the  romantic 
poetry,  fastened  on  its  want  of  large  design  and  structure.  In 
his  preface  of  1853  he  puts  his  case  with  a  plainness  and  point 
that  he  never  afterwards  surpassed  ;  and  he  also  put  it,  more 
formally,  in  his  preface  to  Merope.  It  was  a  true  service  to 
pull  men's  admiration  back  from  beauty  of  detail  to  the  artistic 
whole,  and  to  the  eternal  qualities  of  the  ancient  writings  from 
the  neo -classic  travesty  of  them.  Arnold  does  not  apply  his 
criticism  to  the  more  ambitious  poems  of  his  own  age  ;  but 
it  condemns  them.  Think  of  Idylls  of  the  King,  or  The  Ring 
and  the  Book,  or  even  of  Sigurd  the  Volsung,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  harmonious  proportion,  unity,  and  design,  and  not 
one  of  them  will  hold  water  for  a  moment .  The  Life  and  Death 
of  Jason  is  a  partial  exception.  But  it  is  mostly,  once  more, 
the  works  of  middle  or  lesser  scale  that  are  really  well  put 
together,  like  Sohrab  and  Rustum  itself.  Nor  has  this  ceased 
to  be  true  of  our  poetry  since  Matthew  Arnold's  time. 

The  exposition  of  the  '  grand  style  '  is  to  be  found  in  the 
lectures  On  Translating  Homer,  and  in  their  sequel,  Last  Words  ; 
and  the  same  idea  is  expanded  and  carefully  qualified  in  The 
Study  of  Poetry  : 

The  grand  style  arises  in  poetry  when  a  noble  nature,  poetically 
gifted,  treats  with  simplicity  or  with  severity  a  serious  subject. 

This  is  the  conclusion,  and  the  lectures  on  Homer  lead  up  to 


266  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

it.  They  form  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  efforts  in  the 
language  since  Coleridge's  chapters  on  Wordsworth,  and  along 
with  Pater's  paper  on  Style,  to  work  out  a  critical  problem .  True , 
Matthew  Arnold  has  not,  like  Coleridge,  a  large  metaphysical 
background  of  ideas — he  has  not  that  sort  of  wheelwork  in  his 
head  at  all ;  but  then  for  his  purpose  he  does  not  much  need 
it,  and  he  is  in  no  danger  of  slipping  into  philosophic  jargon,  as 
Coleridge  easily  does.  Also  he  is  talking  of  something  that 
has  to  be  done  ;  not  simply  of  what  has  been  the  wrong  way, 
but  what  is  to  be  the  right  way,  of  getting  Homer  into  English 
with  as  little  loss  as  possible.  What  are  the  right  diction, 
movement,  and  metre  for  that  enterprise  ? 

Homer  is  rapid  in  his  movement,  Homer  is  plain  in  his  words  and 
style,  Homer  is  simple  in  his  ideas,  Homer  is  noble  in  his  manner. 

The  exposition  and  illustration  of  these  qualities,  the  weigh- 
ing and  contrasting  of  Chapman,  Pope,  Cowper,  and  other 
translators  according  as  they  attain  to  or  miss  them,  and, 
not  least,  the  discussion  of  the  metrical  problem,  must  always 
form  a  point  of  departure  for  any  treatment  of  this  question. 
There  are  but  two  unsatisfactory  points  in  the  Lectures.  One 
is  the  carping  at  Francis  Newman,  whose  version,  after  all, 
no  one  took  very  seriously — it  would  have  died  of  itself  ;  there 
is  a  certain  strain  of  bullying  and  inurbanity,  such  as  Matthew 
Arnold  was  justly  hard  upon  in  other  people,  and  which  is 
not  cancelled  by  his  half -apologies.  The  other  unsatisfactory 
point,  as  he  saw,  is  his  own  hexameter  translations,  which 
have  neither  a  good  Greek  nor  a  good  English  rhythm.  They 
are,  in  fact,  far  less  musical  and  effective  than  the  Spenserian 
stanzas  of  Philip  James  Worsley,1  whose  version  of  the  Odyssey 
appeared  in  1861,  just  after  the  Lectures.  Arnold  had  dis- 
missed this  complex  stanza,  as  a  vehicle  for  Homeric  transla- 
tion, on  grounds  of  which  Worsley  well  disposes  in  his  preface. 
His  formal  criticism  is  as  good  as  Matthew  Arnold's  own,  and 
as  well  expressed,  when  he  pleads  that 

whatever  objections  may  be  urged  against  a  rhymed  translation 
of  Homer  diminish  in  weight  precisely  as  the  correspondences 
become  more  and  more  involved  ;  though  it  is  doubtful  whether 
such  involutions  could  safely  be  carried  beyond  the  limits  laid  down 
by  Spenser.  It  is  one  great  merit  of  the  Spenserian  stanza,  that 
the  number  of  styles  possible  under  the  laws  which  it  introduces  is 
practically  unlimited. 

It  is  also  true  that  the  real  proof  is  in  the  result ;  Worsley's 


THE  METRE  FOR  HOMER         267 

rendering  of  the  tale  of  Nausicaa,  or  of  the  picture  of  the  garden 
of  Calypso,  is  rich,  sweet,  and  above  all  natural ;  and  the 
associations  of  the  stanza  well  suit  the  temper  of  these  parts 
of  the  Odyssey,  though  they  suit  the  Iliad  less  well. 

Yet  I  believe  that  the  true  measure  for  Homeric  translation 
is  still  Chapman's, — Chapman's,  purged  of  the  roughness  and 
fantastic  sallies,  the  gnarls  and  interruptions,  which  Chapman 
has  associated  with  it.  These  faults  of  his  blind  us  to  the 
excellence  of  his  fourteen -syllabled  line,  usually  broken  at 
the  eighth  syllable,  which  is  a  near  equivalent  to  the  hexa- 
meter in  the  amount  of  matter  it  contains,  which  admits  of 
much  continuity  as  well  of  salient  single  lines,  and  which  gets 
the  onset  and  directness  of  the  hexameter  ;  although,  it  is 
true,  it  misses  the  rushing  ripple  of  the  dactyl.  But  the  dactyl, 
we  know,  is  very  expensive  to  reproduce  in  English  at  all. 
No,  before  we  prefer  any  other  measure,  let  us  have  a  whole 
book  of  Homer  done  by  a  sufficient  scholar-poet  into  a  style 
like  this  : 

The  Princess  with  her  women  train  without  the  fort  he  found, 

Beside  a  limpid  running  stream,  upon  the  primrose  ground ; 

In  two  ranks  seated  opposite,  with  soft  alternate  stroke 

Of  bare,  white,  counter-thrusting  feet,  fulling  a  splendid  cloak 

Fresh  from  the  loom ;  incessant  rolled  athwart  the  fluted  board 

The  thick  web  fretted,  while  two  maids,  with  arms  uplifted,  poured 

Pure  water  on  it  diligently,  and  to  their  moving  feet 

In  answering  verse  they  sang  a  chaunt  of  cadence  pure  and  sweet. 

These  lines  are  from  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson's  Congal  (1872). 
He  hardly  keeps  up  this  excellent  style,  though  his  aim  (see 
Ch.  xix.,  post)  was  to  be  Homeric  ;  yet  in  such  a  passage  there 
is  little  to  wish  away,  in  verse  or  language,  before  we  are 
reminded  of  Homer.  Another  medium  might  be  the  Sigurd 
measure  used  by  Morris  for  translating  the  Odyssey  (1887). 
Matthew  Arnold  had  not  this  alternative  before  him.  The 
Sigurd  measure  has,  we  shall  see  (Ch.  xvi.,  post),  many  ad  vantages 
and  felicities  ;  but  the  diffuseness  of  Morris,  and  his  special 
diction,  do  not  suit  Homer  ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  think  them 
away  and  to  judge  how  the  measure,  without  them,  would 
serve  for  Homer  in  English. 

Arnold's  Lectures  gave  the  impulse  to  all  discussion  of  this 
kind  ;  and  they  are  so  excellent  not  only  because  they  con- 
tribute to  the  subject,  but  because  they  stick  to  the  subject. 
There  is  nothing  in  them  about  culture  and  conduct,  or  about 
poetry  being  the  ultimate  religion,  and  there  is  no  polite 
scarifying  of  John  Bull.     Nor  has  the  writer's  way  of  balancing 


268  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

and  comparing  yet  become  too  artificial,  as  it  does  later  in  the 
articles  upon  Byron  and  Wordsworth.  And  it  is  here  that  he 
leads  up  to  his  amended  description  of  the  '  grand  style,' 
which,  like  all  Matthew  Arnold's  formulae,  can  be  neither 
ignored  nor  accepted,  and  over  which  one  critic  more  must  now 
needs  vex  himself. 

It  is  easy  to  pick  holes  in  it,  and  to  say  that  he  describes, 
not  the  grand  style  at  all,  but  the  conditions  of  its  appearance, 
namely  the  '  noble  and  poetically  gifted  nature,'  and  the 
adequate  and  serious  subject  ;  and  that  he  then  gives  two  of 
its  attributes,  alternatively,  namely  '  simplicity  and  severity  '  ; 
so  that  we  never  get  to  the  grand  style  itself  at  all.  But  then  he 
says,  what  is  true,  that  you  can  only  feel  it,  not  define  it,  and 
that  you  can  only  feel  it  through  examples.  .  These,  then,  he 
provides  ;  these  he  reiterates  ;  and  he  works  through  them 
steadily,  saying  that 

if  we  have  any  tact,  we  shall  find  them,  when  we  have  lodged  them 
well  in  our  minds,  an  infallible  touchstone  for  detecting  the  presence 
or  absence  of  high  poetic  quality,  and  also  the  degree  of  this  quality, 
in  all  other  poetry  which  we  may  place  beside  them.  Short  passages, 
even  single  fines,  will  serve  our  turn  quite  sufficiently. 

It  was  not  Matthew  Arnold's  fault  if  he  did  not  '  lodge  them 
in  our  minds  ' ;  and  his  examples  roused  ample  debate,  as  he 
desired.  He  finds  other  examples  when  he  quits  the  region  of 
grandeur  for  that  of  charm,  felicity,  and  '  natural  magic' 
And  he  chooses  his  lines  well ;  but  the  whole  procedure,  especi- 
ally in  his  later  essays,  like  those  on  Byron,  Wordsworth, 
Goethe,  and  Milton,  where  he  plays  off  against  one  another  the 
test-passages  not  only  from  these  poets,  but  from  their  critics — 
becomes  a  little  too  talismanic  and  dexterous,  and  also  too 
arbitrary.  For  one  thing,  the  examples  are  too  short,  and 
'  single  lines  '  cannot  '  serve  our  purpose  quite  sufficiently.' 
If  we  are  to  have  a  talisman,  a  whole  speech  of  Satan  or 
Macbeth  is  a  better  one  ;  if  only  because  grandeur  or 
charm  of  style  cannot  be  severed  from  grandeur  or  charm 
of  rhythm,  and  in  a  fine  or  two  rhythm  cannot  have  proper 
scope. 

VII 

The  account  of  poetry  as  a  '  criticism  of  life  '  has  been  much 
battered,  and  people  have  exhausted  themselves  in  saying  that 
the  novel  also  is  a  criticism  of  life,  and  that  so  are  the  Ten 
Commandments,  and  that   poetry  is   art   and  not  criticism. 


CRITICISM  OF  LIFE  269 

All  this  is  true  ;  but  it  seems  more  to  the  purpose  to  add  that 
there  was  nothing  else  for  Matthew  Arnold  to  say,  once  he  was 
pressed  to  explain  what  it  was  in  poetry  that  he  really  valued. 
By  a  criticism  of  life  he  meant  something  that  would  illumine 
and  inspire  us  in  the  highest  degree  for  the  business  of  living. 
This  includes,  then,  not  poetry  only,  but  all  high  literature  ; 
an  extension  familiar  to  us  in  the  tribe  of  minds  which  is  repre- 
sented by  Sidney  and  Shelley,  with  their  ancestor  Plato.  And 
high  literature  really  gave  Matthew  Arnold  his  working  religion. 
The  best  comment  on  his  phrase  we  find  by  glancing  at  his 
interesting  notebooks,  where  he  put  down  a  pensee  from  Pascal, 
or  Johnson,  or  the  -Vulgate,  or  Goethe,  to  carry  him  through 
each  of  his  hard  professional  days.  And  a  very  good  religion  it 
is.  But  it  can  only,  we  are  told,  be  good  for  a  small  handful 
of  mankind.  '  Ah  !  yes,  but  then,'  replies  Matthew  Arnold  in 
effect, '  I  say  not  only  that  poetry  is  a  religion,  but  that  religion, 
that  is,  the  real,  essential,  though  often  unconscious  part  of 
religion,  is  just  poetry  ;  and  that  is  what  the  multitude  really 
live  by,  though  they  do  not  know  it.  So  let  us  purge  their 
religion  of  its  false  doctrine,  and  they  will  get  nearer  to  the 
real  essence  of  it  ;  and  then  poetry  and  religion  will  meet  at 
last,  like  long -sundered  lovers.'  This  application  of  course 
does  not  come  out  clear  till  he  begins  to  write  on  theology  ; 
but  it  is  implicit  from  the  first.  We  must  keep,  however,  for 
the  moment  to  his  literary  judgements  ;  the  lectures  On  the 
Study  of  Celtic  Literature  came  after  the  Essays  in  Criticism,  but 
may  be  mentioned  first. 

Here  he  frisks  wildly  about  his  theme,  and  how  far  he  knew 
any  of  the  originals  in  Welsh  and  Irish  remains  obscure.  He 
expands  into  humorous  and  shaky  race -theorising — one  of 
his  most  serious  intellectual  faults.  He  canters  round  and 
round  in  a  wonderful  circle.  Take  a  few  examples  from 
Celtic  poetry,  and  find  a  certain  quality,  say  '  natural  magic,' 
in  them.  Lay  down  that  this  can  only  be  '  Celtic  '  ;  and  then, 
when  you  find  anything  like  it  in  a  '  Saxon  '  such  as  Shakespeare 
or  Keats,  say  that  such  a  '  Saxon,'  of  himself,  cannot  possess 
that  quality  and  can  only  have  '  got  '  it  from  the  Celtic  strain 
in  him.  The  Celtic  scholars  have  always  smiled  at  much  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  commentary,  but  still  they  have  been  grateful 
to  him  ;  and  well  they  may  be.  The  praise  of  '  Ossian,'  the 
true  sympathy  with  the  Welsh  spirit  and  genius,  the  delightful 
quotations,  the  opening  up  of  a  fresh,  endless  field  of  letters, 
hardly  known  thus  far  except  to  the  scholars  themselves — 
what  could  better  earn  their  gratitude  ? 


270  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

In  the  first  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism,  which  really  brought 
Arnold  into  reputation  as  a  prose  writer,  and  which  are  still 
wonderfully  fresh  and  alive,  we  see,  full-blown,  his  conception  of 
criticism  and  its  business.     It  is  a  temper  of  mind,  he  says, 

which  regards  Europe  as  being,  for  intellectual  and  spiritual  pur- 
poses, one  great  confederation,  bound  to  a  joint  action  and  working 
to  a  common  result  ; 

it  is  the  temper  of  '  seeing  the  thing  as  it  really  is  '  ;  of  keeping 
the  mind  a  clean  mirror,  untarnished  by  personal,  national, 
provincial,  or  doctrinal  prejudice.  Others,  like  Mill  or  Huxley, 
might  cultivate  this  temper  in  philosophy  or  science  ;  their 
material  lay  in  the  facts  of  nature,  or  in  the  forces  of  history. 
Arnold's  material  lies  in  '  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought 
in  the  world  ' — in  literature,  that  is,  in  the  large  sense  in  which 
we  have  seen  him  taking  the  term.  And  the  method  of  getting 
at  this  '  best '  is,  once  more,  that  of  comparison.  The  actual 
ideal  of  a  federation  of  minds  was  in  the  air  ac  the  time  ; 
but  the  method  approaches  the  method  of  Sainte-Beuve,  and  the 
Essays  in  Criticism  are  a  modification  of  the  causerie. 

Sainte-Beuve,  who  lived  in  1869,  and  went  on  writing  to  the 
last,  knew  and  appreciated  Arnold,  who  wrote  after  his  death 
an  admirable  sketch  of  him,  and  termed  him  'the  master  of 
us  all  in  criticism.'  But  Sainte-Beuve  has  no  mission,  and 
treats  his  readers  as  urbane  and  rational  already.  Matthew 
Arnold  tries  to  scold  and  banter  them  into  becoming  so  ;  and 
he  has  his  mission,  which  is  to  enforce  his  ideas  of  culture, 
literature,  and  the  intellectual  life.  Hence  his  Essays  of  1865, 
and  many  of  their  successors,  are  not  the  causerie  pure  and 
simple  at  all.  They  are  a  salad,  mostly  deftly  and  harmoniously 
mixed,  of  jests,  eloquence,  topical  allusion,  disquisition  on  the 
national  failings,  genuine  literary  judgements,  and  the  lofty 
idealism  just  indicated,  which  finds  salvation  in  criticism,  letters, 
and  culture .  Some  of  the  subjects  had  the  charm  of  discoveries . 
No  one  in  England  seemed  to  have  heard  of  Joubert,  with 
his  beautiful  intelligence  and  nature.  French  readers  were 
shocked  at  seeing  Joubert  named  in  the  same  breath  with 
Pascal ;  but  he  was  a  discovery  all  the  same,  like  the  De 
Guerins,  brother  and  sister.  Matthew  Arnold  wrote  on  them 
with  happy  sympathy.  But,  while  he  praised  them,  he  could 
slight  Victor  Hugo  and  even  Racine.  He  managed  to  combine 
a  true  feeling  for  French  prose  with  a  singular  deafness  to  both 
the  form  and  the  spirit  of  French  verse,  though  he  had  heard 
Rachel  and  Madame  Bernhardt. 


OTHER  CRITICISMS  271 

The  essay  on  The  Influence  of  Academies  is  an  attempt, 
Addisonian  in  spirit  and  not  without  practical  effect,  to  reform 
the  blatant  and  metallic  reviewing  that  still  survived,  and  to 
put  the  merely  rhetorical  gift,  as  Arnold  judged  it,  of  writers 
like  Kinglake  and  Macaulay,  in  its  place.  Macaulay,  however, 
stands  much  firmer  than  Matthew  Arnold  thought.  The  open- 
ing essay,  on  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present  Time,  sets 
forth  with  real  power  Arnold's  characteristic  ideal — the  federal 
ideal  of  thought  and  literature,  drawn  from  the  study  of  '  Ger- 
many, France,  Christ,  Moses,  Athens,  Rome,'  and  of  Persia  and 
Britain  too.  He  thus  enlarged  the  whole  material  for  critical 
judgement.,  and  brought  new  territories  into  its  field  of  vision. 
This  ideal  has  now  (1920)  been  thrown  back  for  the  time,  by 
the  public  convulsion.  As  Matthew  Arnold  states  it,  it  sounds 
rather  too  much  for  our  short  life  ;  but  it  is  his  real  contribu- 
tion to  the  English  thought  of  his  age,  and  it  was  probably 
suggested  to  him  more  by  Goethe  than  by  any  one  else.  The 
way  to  realise  it  is  by  the  practice  of  comparison.  We  are  to 
draw  on  all  these  great  writers  and  religious  founders,  in  order 
to  attain  not  a  body  of  formal  truth,  but  a  temper  and  a  critical 
organon,  which  will  keep  us  from  harbouring  wrong  admira- 
tions in  life  and  literature,  and  set  us  in  the  right  way.  Spinoza 
and  Marcus  Aurelius  join  the  company  of  torchbearers . 

vm 

Arnold's  religious  and  social  writings,  which  begin  with  St. 
Paul  and  Protestantism  (1869-70),  and  with  Culture  and  Anarchy 
(1869),  expanded  these  ideas,  and  diverted  their  current, 
leaving  him  the  freer  for  pure  criticism  whenever  to  that  he 
returned,  as  he  did  in  his  studies  of  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Keats, 
and  Gray,  and  in  The  Study  of  Poetry.  These  and  some  others 
are  collected  in  the  second  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism  (1881) ; 
and  behind  them,  of  various  dates,  stand  further  studies,  of 
Tolstoy,  Amiel,  Emerson,  George  Sand,  and  of  the  critics  of 
Goethe  and  Milton.  The  method  varies  a  good  deal.  In  the 
Gray  and  the  Keats  it  is  concise,  and  all  the  better  for  that  ; 
moving  still  from  quotation  to  quotation,  from  formula  to 
formula,  swinging  between  praises  and  reserves  in  a  way  that 
became  widely  but  not  well  imitated,  and  ending  on  a  generous 
note.  The  Study  of  Poetry  is  a  chapter  of  poetic,  a  confession 
of  faith,  concerning  the  uses  and  destinies  of  poetry  and  the 
tests  of  absolute  excellence  in  it.  This  essay  did  more  than 
anything  else  to  spread  Matthew  Arnold's  ideas  broadcast. 


272  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

In  the  Emerson,  which  heads  the  Discourses  in  America,  de- 
livered in  1883-4,  there  is  more  of  personal  retrospect ;  and  the 
chief  interest  lies  in  the  pages  on  Carlyle,  for  whom  Matthew 
Arnold  had  never  greatly  cared,  but  whom  he  now  salutes 
with  more  cordiality,  and  perhaps  with  a  sense  of  not  having 
done  so  duly  before  ;  and  in  those  on  Newman,  for  whom  he 
had  always  much  of  the  old  Oxford  leniency,  and  even  felt 
reverence.  In  George  Sand  he  tells  of  his  visit  to  Nohant  ;  in 
another  article  x  he  honours  her  at  the  expense  of  Balzac, 
whom  he  cries  down,  as  we  might,  alas !  expect ;  and  he  pre- 
dicts, most  dangerously,  that  George  Sand  will  outlive  Balzac. 
In  the  papers  on  Amiel  and  on  Count  Leo  Tolstoi  he  is  once 
more  an  introducer.  Matthew  Arnold  tells  a  story  well,  and 
his  sketch  of  Anna  Karenina  is  a  model  of  that  sort  of 
writing. 

He  also  reviewed  excellently,  though  not  often.  He  justly 
praised  Stopford  Brooke's  little  Primer  of  English  Literature 
(1876)  ;  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  he  did  not  praise  Dowden's 
Life  of  Shelley.  The  biographer,  who  otherwise  did  his  work 
well,  had  sentimentalised ;  in  producing  his  painful  new 
material,  lie  had  seemed  to  salve,  or  evade,  what  was  indefen- 
sible in  Shelley's  behaviour  to  his  first  wife ;  and  he  is  duly 
beaten  for  doing  so.  But  Matthew  Arnold  could  never  value 
Shelley  properly  ;  and,  since  it  would  take  too  long  to  examine 
all  his  antipathies  and  blindnesses — which  are  as  interesting 
as  Johnson's,  and  never  merely  freakish — let  us  take  Shelley 
for  an  example . 

Those  who  extol  him  as  the  poet  of  clouds,  the  poet  of  sunsets, 
are  only  saying  that  In  did  not,  in  fact,  lay  hold  upon  the  poet's 
right  subject-matter  ;  and,  in  honest  truth,  with  all  his  charm  of 
soul  and  spirit,  and  with  all  his  gift  of  musical  diction  and  move- 
ment, he  never,  or  hardly  ever,  did.  Except,  as  I  have  said,  in  a 
few  short  things  and  single  passages,  his  poetry  is  less  satisfactory 
than  his  translations  ;  for  in  these  the  subject-matter  was  found 
for  him. 

And  then  we  hear  that  Shelley's  letters  may  well  outlive  his 
poetry.  This,  in  effect,  is  the  reasoned  defence  of  the  famous 
sentence  about  the  '  beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel.'  I  shall 
not  argue  for  Shelley  ;  Mr.  Swinburne  has  answered  the  case 
once  for  all ;  and  besides,  securus  judical  orbis.  It  is,  how- 
ever, strange  that  such  a  hoper  for  mankind  as  Matthew  Arnold 
saw  nothing  in  Shelley's  evangel.  Why  was  it  ?  One  is 
tempted  at  first  to  say  it  was  sheer  Whiggery,  the  impatience 


RELIGIOUS  WORKS  273 

of  the  English  gentleman  with  Shelley's  '  set '  and  '  world  '  and 
the  free  Italian  life  ;  or  again,  that  it  was  lack  of  ear.  But  it 
is  something  more  than  that,  and  the  clue  is  found  in  a  striking 
letter  of  1865,  where  Arnold  speaks  of  the  need 

to  keep  pushing  on  one's  posts  into  the  darkness,  and  to  establish  no 
post  that  is  not  perfectly  in  light  and  firm.  One  gains  nothing  on  the 
darkness,  by  being,  like  Shelley,  as  incoherent  as  the  darkness  itself. 

That  is  it.  You  cannot  formulate  Shelley,  or  put  him  into  a 
pensee  to  get  through  the  day  with.  He  is  drink,  not  meat. 
He  is  '  incoherent  as  the  darkness  itself.' — But  then  so  is  the 
sunrise  '  incoherent,'  and  so  is  the  '  prophet  of  Israel's  restora- 
tion.' Nothing  can  better  show  the  concrete,  ethical  turn  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  mind,  at  least  as  it  tended  to  become, 
than  these  deliverances.  In  his  'notebooks'  there  are  bits 
from  Rasselas ;  and  there  was  a  good  solid  eighteenth-century 
strain  in  him,  poet  as  he  was  ;  and,  much  as  he  talked  of  the 
'  age  of  prose  and  reason,'  it  was  the  strain  that  gave  discipline, 
and  force,  and  pungency  to  his  own  prose.  In  his  preface  to 
the  Six  Lives  from  Johnson  he  pays  his  tribute  to  that  age. 

Yet  this,  of  course,  is  but  one  side  of  Matthew  Arnold,  and 
it  is  not  the  one  we  finally  think  of  when  we  watch  him  at  work 
as  a  critic.  He  is  truly  of  the  tribe  of  Sainte-Beuve,  to  whom 
one  always  comes  back.  And  with  far  less  psychology,  flexi- 
bility, and  science  than  Sainte-Beuve,  he  has,  at  his  best,  a 
loftier  view,  and,  in  the  phrase  of  his  favourite  Goethe,  a  more 
'panoramic'  one.  We  see  this  in  his  notable  words  on 
Sainte-Beuve  *  himself,  which  are  an  admirable  example  of 
his  style.  It  is  here  free  from  the  repetitions  of  phrase  which 
became  his  trick,  and  which,  like  a  number  of  reflecting  mirrors, 
distract  us  from  the  clear  sculptured  outline  of  his  thought  : 

As  a  guide  to  bring  us  to  a  knowledge  of  the  French  genius  and 
literature  he  is  unrivalled — perfect,  so  far  as  a  poor  mortal  critic 
can  be  perfect,  in  knowledge  of  his  subject,  in  judgement,  in  tact, 
and  tone.  Certain  spirits  are  of  an  excellence  almost  ideal  in 
certain  lines  ;  the  human  race  might  willingly  adopt  them  as  its 
spokesman,  recognising  that  on  these  lines  their  style  and  utterance 
may  stand  as  those,  not  of  bounded  individuals,  but  of  the  human 
race.  So  Homer  speaks  for  the  human  race,  and  with  an  excellence 
which  is  ideal,  in  epic  narration  :  Plato  in  the  treatment  at  once 
beautiful  and  profound  of  philosophical  questions  ;  Shakespeare  in 
the  presentation  of  human  character  ;  Voltaire  in  light  verse  and 
ironical  discussion.  A  fist  of  perfect  ones,  indeed,  each  in  his  own 
fine  !  and  we  may  almost  venture  to  add  to  their  number,  in  his 
own  line  of  literary  criticism,  Sainte-Beuve. 

VOL.  I.  S 


274  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

IX 

Arnold's  excursions  into  theology,  social  preaching,  and 
politics  fill  many  of  his  volumes,  and  are  sometimes  called  a 
mere  sojourn  in  the  wilderness  ;  but  this  is  an  erroneous  view. 
They  contain  some  of  his  best  exposition  and  satire  ;  he  put  his 
heart  into  them,  and  they  made  their  mark  on  opinion.  It 
is  true  that  they  are  journalism — though  often  good  and  super- 
lative journalism,  for  they  are  addressed  to  a  stage  of  living 
thought — and  that  they  are  therefore  in  part  written  in  the 
dust.  The  moving  impulse  is  to  be  found  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
faith  in  the  saving  power  of  literature  and  poetry.  Read  the 
Bible,  he  says,  in  that  light ;  it  gives  us  '  morality  touched  with 
emotion,'  and  poetry,  both  in  the  grand  style.  Find,  he  says, 
the  secret  of  Israel  in  his  sublime  expression  of  the  need  of 
mankind  for  righteousness.  Study  the  books  of  both  Isaiahs 
in  this  sense,  taking  them  in  their  historical  setting,  and  using 
modern  criticism,  and  correcting  the  Authorised  Version  sparely 
and  with  literary  tact.  The  two  little  volumes,  The  Great 
Prophecy  of  Israel's  Restoration  (1872)  and  Isaiah  of  Jerusalem 
(1883)  were  an  effort  to  apply  such  ideas  to  practical  teaching. 
Find,  Arnold  proceeds,  the  secret  of  the  Gospels  in  the  'sweet 
reasonableness  '  and  other  qualities  of  Jesus,  using  similar 
methods  and  safeguards  in  interpretation  ;  and  that  of  Paul 
in  his  deep,  mystical,  and  unmethodised  apprehension  of  the 
appeal  of  *  rich  single  words,'  like  faith,  grace,  love,  or  the  will 
of  God,  in  which  he  develops  the  '  secret  of  Jesus.'  Do  all  this, 
keeping  your  head  and  literary  sense,  knowing  that  Israel  and 
Jesus  do  not '  Hellenise,'  or  make  refined  and  connected  systems, 
and  seeing  clearly  when  Paul  Hellenises  and  when  he  'He  braises,' 
and  then  you  will  be  on  the  track,  at  any  rate,  of  true  religion, 
of  the  only  religion  which  can  survive  the  accretions  that  have 
gathered  round  the  popular  cult.  Such  is  the  broad  sense  of 
St.  Paul  and  Protestantism  (1869-70)  ;  of  Literature  and  Dogma 
(1873),  with  its  sequel  God  and  the  Bible  (1874-5),  a  reply  to 
critics  ;   and  of  Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Religion  (1876-7). 

In  all  this  Matthew  Arnold  cut  clean  across  the  recognised 
divisions  of  English  opinion.  Far  is  his  temper  from  that  of 
the  philosophic  liberals,  the  men  of  science,  and  the  positivists, 
though  he  has  certain  affinities,  after  all,  with  these  last.  He 
called  Comte  a  '  grotesque  old  French  pedant '  in  his  cheerful 
way,  and  he  was  assailed  by  devotees  for  want  of  seriousness. 
Behold,  they  said,  society  groaning  and  travailing, '  and  me  ' — so 
Arnold  expressed  their  charge — '  me,  in  the  midst  of  the  general 


A  REFORMED  CHURCH  276 

tribulation,  handing  out  my  pouncet-box.'  Still,  his  large 
and  catholic  conception  of  literature,  and  his  effort  to  preserve 
and  clear  the  ancient  sources  of  religious  emotion,  bring  him 
much  nearer  to  these  critics  than  to  the  scientific  liberals .  He 
has  also  certain  ties  with  the  Broad  Churchmen ;  but  he  was 
outside  the  fold,  he  was  free,  and  he  threw  over  the  whole 
cargo  of  orthodox  doctrine  with  a  cheerful  completeness  which 
staggered  the  compromisers.  He  is,  in  fact,  an  agnostic 
(though  he  would  have  positively  reared  at  the  description) 
as  regards  the  ordinary  propositions  of  theism.  Miracles  must 
go  ;  they  'do  not  happen,'  and  we  know  how  men  come  to  believe 
in  them.  The  official  creeds  must  go  ;  they  are  the  creations  of 
'  pseudo -science.'  What  we  can  be  sure  of  is  the  working  of 
an  '  eternal  law,  not  ourselves,'  impersonal  it  appears,  though 
naturally  and  inevitably  personified,  and  '  making  for  righteous- 
ness.' If  religion,  as  a  motive  power,  is  to  be  saved,  it  must 
be  transformed  in  this  sense. 

All  this  is  set  forth  with  point  and  eloquence,  largely  by  the 
use  of  a  relentless  iteration  and  flogging  of  the  key -phrases, 
and  its  tenor  is  not  obscure.  However,  Matthew  Arnold  per- 
plexed his  position,  and  also  bis  readers,  by  his  practical  con- 
servatism. He  is  all,  it  would  seem,  for  keeping  up  the 
ordinary  religious  language,  and  certainly  for  keeping  up,  in 
some  improved  form,  the  Church  of  England  ;  which  has  not 
been  very  grateful  for  his  consideration.  He  was  consistent 
in  his  way,  since  he  thought  that,  for  England,  the  Church  of 
England  was  the  best  and  safest  depositary  of  culture  ;  and  he 
wanted  to  save  culture,  which  the  Nonconformists,  with  their 
bleak  antipathy  to  it,  would  never  do.  Salvation,  so  we  make 
out,  involving  the  rescue  of  religion  from  the  radicals,  the 
pedants,  and  the  men  of  science  on  the  one  side,  and  from  the 
Nonconformists  on  the  other,  is  to  come  from  a  renewed 
Church  of  England,  which  shall  be  cleared  of  legendary  theology, 
and  which  shall  thus  work  freely  on  the  national  mind  through 
its  reformed  apprehension  of  what  Israel,  Jesus,  and  Paul 
really  meant  ;  being  aided  thereto,  above  all,  by  a  study  of  the 
'  best  that  has  been  said  and  thought  in  the  world.'  This  was 
the  way  in  which  the  English  soul  should  and  could  be  re- 
animated. And  the  man  who  propounded  all  this  thought 
Shelley  a  dreamer  ! 

In  Culture  and  Anarchy  (1869)  he  rings  the  changes  again  on 
Hebraism  and  Hellenism  with  little  mercy,  and  on  yet  another 
set  of  phrases  too  :  the  materialised  upper  class,  the  vulgarised 
middle  class,  the  brutalised  lower  class,  Barbarians,  Philistines, 


276  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

Populace.  It  is  a  rather  dull  book,  with  lively  passages.  The 
satire  on  the  middle  class  is  brisker  in  that  odd,  almost  faded 
jeu  d'esprit,  which  still  contains  some  good  reading,  called 
Friendship's  Garland  (1866-70),  with  its  imaginary  professor 
and  his  comments  on  British  society  and  education.  On 
education  Matthew  Arnold  wrote  much.  He  was  for  forty 
years  an  inspector  of  elementary  schools,  and  some  of  his  reports 
have  been  published.  He  went  to  France  and  Qermany,  there 
to  investigate  education  officially,  and  his  book  on  Higher 
Schools  and  Universities  in  those  countries  is  the  fruit  ;  he  wrote 
articles,  too,  like  A  French  Eton  and  Porro  Unum  estNecessarium. 
All  this  may  be  taken  as  part  of  his  effort  to  bring  home  to  his 
countrymen  the  best  that  had  been  thought,  and  said,  and  done, 
for  their  example . 

The  result  is  valuable,  if  not  always  exactly  literature.  He 
saw  some  of  the  problems  clearly.  He  saw  how  the  public 
schools  and  old  universities  were  a  preserve  for  certain  classes, 
not  for  the  nation  ;  and  how,  even  there,  humanism  itself  was 
deadened  by  some  of  the  ancestral  recipes  for  producing  it. 
He  saw  the  absence,  in  the  universities  especially,  of  the  teach- 
ing of  the  realities  of  antiquity,  and  the  weariness  and  futility, 
for  the  mass,  of  much  '  composition.'  The  son  of  Thomas 
Arnold  could  never  forget  how  his  father  had  quickened  the 
teaching  of  history,  and  of  religion  too,  not  only  for  Rugby, 
but  for  England  ;  and  so  to  his  mother  he  writes  : 

My  one  feeling  on  closing  the  book  [J.  T.  Coleridge's  Memoir  of 
Keble]  is  papa's  immense  superiority  to  all  the  set,  mainly  because, 
owing  to  his  historic  sense,  he  was  a  sower,  wonderfully,  for  his 
nation,  time,  and  profession,  European  ;  and  so  got  himself  out 
of  the  narrow  medium  in  which,  after  all,  his  English  friends  lived. 

The  two  little  editions  of  Isaiah  show  the  same  impulse  of  the 
educator,  which  was  perhaps  the  deepest  thing  in  Matthew 
Arnold  when  he  was  not, and  sometimes  also  when  he  was, a  poet. 
His  value  as  an  educational  reformer  was  lessened  in  several 
ways.  He  had  an  imperfect  notion  of  the  spirit  and  value  of 
science,  and  though  he  made  his  bow  to  it,  he  was  inclined  to 
set  it  in  a  false  and  needless  opposition  to  the  humanities.  He 
also  had  a  strong  anti -English  bias,  and  fell  in  love  with  the 
foreign  bureaucratic  organisation,  without  really  studying  it 
long  or  seeing  that  England  would  never  digest  it.  He  some- 
times had  the  State  on  the  brain.  He  saw  how  well  the 
State  might  unify  and  direct,  but  not  how  horribly  it  might 
meddle.     Still,   he   did   more   than  anybody  to   interest  the 


SUMMARY  277 

reading  public  in  education,  and  much  to  temper  the  dreariness 
of  the  topic  for  human  perusal.  This  was  no  slight  service. 
Working  as  Arnold  did  under  the  yoke  of  a  system  he  dis- 
approved, and  before  free  education  and  its  consequences  had 
prevailed,  he  wrote  much  that  is  now  only  of  historic  note.  But 
his  professional  reports  are  full  of  light  and  humanity  ;  he  is 
always  for  the  living  word  and  the  quickening  spirit,  never  for 
mere  mechanism  and  the  dead  '  result  '  ;  and  this  is  the 
epitaph  which,  as  an  educator,  he  would  have  preferred. 

Matthew  Arnold's  politics  need  only  be  glanced  at.  He  wrote 
more  than  once  on  Ireland,  with  less  sympathy  than  he  supposed . 
He  wanted  a  new  temper  towards  Ireland  to  arise  in  England, 
and  saw  that  there  was  the  difficulty  ;  but  when  it  came  to  the 
point  he  shook  his  head  over  the  charming  Celt,  and  took, 
like  maity  others,  a  strong  Whig  line.  In  this  department  the 
genius  of  Matthew  Arnold  is  not  seen  at  work.  He  admired 
Burke,  but  his  political  utterance  has  nothing  of  the  stamp  that 
we  find  in  Burke's  most  casual  pamphlets. 

X 

On  the  morrow  of  his  death  Matthew  Arnold  was  saluted  in 
the  press  as  '  a  guide,  a  representative,  a  glory  '  of  his  country. 
He  had  become  an  institution,  all  the  more  that,  like  a  true 
Briton  and  his  father's  son,  he  had  turned  aside  from  pure 
letters  into  the  public  fray.  Hardly  any  other  critic  was 
widely  read  before  the  arrival  of  Pater  ;  except  Macaulay,  who 
was  read  by  the  multitude.  English  society  felt  that  Arnold 
was  a  poet  who  had  a  right  to  talk  about  poetry,  a  thinker 
who  derided  philosophy,  a  scholar  without  being  a  pagan,  an 
eminent  public  servant  with  a  good  conservative  streak  in  him  ; 
and  that  no  one  had,  no  one  deserved,  more  friends.  There 
was,  indeed,  his  odd  religion  ;  some  thought  he  had  too  much 
religion,  some  that  he  had  too  little.  But,  to  the  earnest  reader, 
he  seemed  mysteriously  to  be  on  the  right  side  after  all.  When 
attacked,  he  '  only  took  snuff,'  smiled,  and  reiterated  generally. 
The  '  great  middle  class,'  when  it  did  read  him,  rather  liked  his 
jibes  and  '  far -singing  arrows,'  and  went  on  as  before,  every 
one  thinking  that  the  hits  at  other  people  were  very  good.  All 
this  made  Matthew  Arnold  a  considerable,  a  very  attractive, 
figure.  But  we  like  best  to  think  of  him  as  what  George  Sand 
called  him,  a  jeune  Milton  voyageant,  in  his  youthful  and 
melancholy  ferment  of  thought,  before  he  had  discovered  the 
creed  of  culture  ;  seeing  himself  on  the  frontier  between  two 


278     EARLIER  CRITICS :  AND  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

faiths,  the  one  extinct,  the  other  hardly  born  ;  feeling  '  the 
expiring  wave  of  the  mighty  influence  '  of  Byron  ;  going  night 
after  night  to  see  Rachel  act,  and  reading  the  '  too  bold  dying 
song  '  of  Emily  Bronte,  which,  he  tells  us, '  stirr'd,  like  a  clarion- 
blast,  my  soul '  ;  and  solitary -minded,  with  something  of 
Alfred  de  Vigny  in  him,  and  something  of  Keats.  And  all  the 
time,  all  his  days,  there  hovered  before  him  the  true  artist's 
ideal  of  what  he  himself  calls  '  the  law  of  pure  and  flawless 
workmanship  '  ;  and  that  is  Matthew  Arnold's  real  praise. 


CHAPTER   XI 
WALTER  PATER :   AND  OTHER  CRITICS 


Many  of  our  critics  have  walked  in  the  high  road  of  life,  and 
written  for  all  men  in  the  language  of  the  world.  Such  was 
Dryden  ;  and  such,  when  he  dropped  long  words,  was  Johnson. 
In  their  pages,  and  in  Matthew  Arnold's  too,  there  is  abund- 
ance of  fresh  air  ;  and  the  want  of  fresh  air  is  the  great  deficiency 
in  Walter  Pater,  and  a  source  of  the  discomfort  which  he  causes 
to  most  readers,  unless  they  are  like  himself.  Yet  he  is  our 
greatest  critic  since  Coleridge.  He  left  behind  him  a  little 
creative  writing,  and  a  sheaf  of  what  he  called  '  appreciations.' 
Time  has  little  dulled  or  worn  that  fabric  ;  it  is  dyed  too  fast. 
What  Pater  may  have  lost  by  his  esoteric  and  not  wholly 
healthy  habit  of  mind,  and  his  indifference  to  the  broad  energies 
of  mankind,  he  more  than  recovers  by  his  delicacy  of  sense 
and  his  unimpeded  concentration.  Much  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
writing  is,  to  use  his  own  agreeable  phrase,  '  touched  with 
caducity  '  :  he  was  very  English,  and  he  could  not  keep  off 
politics.  Pater  was  rewarded  for  knowing  so  well  what  he 
could  do.  His  influence  stole  out  irom  a  narrow  circle  ;  it  has 
never  reached  the  larger  public,  but  it  has  never  retreated. 

He  wrote  one  really  continuous  book,  Marius  the  Epicurean 
(1885)  :  the  fragment  called  Gaston  de  Latour  would  have 
been  another.  His  integer  was  the  article,  the  etude,  or  the 
lecture,  of  magazine  length.  This  limitation  may  have  suited 
his  talent,  though  it  also  encouraged  his  love  for  condensed 
and  over -studied  sentences.  The  first  essay  that  he  printed  was 
on  Coleridge,  in  1866  ;  the  next  was  on  Winckelmann.  After 
the  appearance  of  his  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renaissance 
(1873)  his  reputation  was  secure.  Marius  took  some  five  years 
to  finish  ;  Qaston,  and  the  four  short  Imaginary  Portraits 
(1887),  are  experiments  of  the  same  order.  Here,  as  in  Emerald 
U thwart  and  The  Child  in  the  House,  his  imagination  works 
freely,  instead  of  on  some  historical  personage.  Meantime 
appeared  Appreciations  (1889),  which  contain  his  theory  of 

879 


280  PATER 

style  and  composition,  and  his  judgements  on  English  litera- 
ture. Latterly  he  turned  more  to  Greece  :  the  fruits  are  Plato 
and  Platonism  (1893),  a  course  of  college  lectures,  and  Greek 
Studies.  Some  reviews,  originally  published  in  the  Guardian, 
should  not  be  forgotten. 

Walter  Horatio  Pater1  (1839-94)  was  at  the  King's  School 
in  Canterbury  ;  the  art  and  atmosphere  of  the  cathedral  left 
their  trace  on  his  mind,  and  the  Anglican  spirit  and  ritual 
always  appealed  to  him  strongly.  In  the  Oxford  training  for 
'  humaner  letters,'  with  its  direct  introduction  to  the  Greece 
of  Pericles,  he  found  another  of  his  primary  interests.  His 
headquarters  after  1864  were  at  Brasenose,  where  he  resided 
long  as  tutor  ;  and  he  lived  for  an  interval  in  Kensington.  He 
travelled  to  France  and  Italy,  their  scenery,  art,  and  litera- 
ture sinking  into  him  ;  Ruskin  he  had  read  in  boyhood.  His 
reading  was  deep,  and  what  may  be  called  intensive.  In  each 
of  these  great  fields — antiquity,  the  Renaissance,  modern 
thought  and  religion,  modern  letters — Pater  chose  a  definite 
plot  of  ground  and  wrought  on  it,  caring  for  it  from  first  to 
last,  and  returning  to  it  faithfully.  To  perceive,  to  know,  to 
enjoy,  to  find  the  words  for  his  pleasures,  seems  to  have  been 
his  existence.  His  pages  mirror  one  side  of  the  Oxford  spirit  : 
its  leisured  humanism,  its  backward  gaze,  its  charm,  its  eclecti- 
cism— something  most  unlike  the  refreshing  east  winds  of 
contemporary  Cambridge  ;  which,  however,  were  not  further 
from  Pater  than  the  academic  '  causes  '  and  wrangles  of  his 
own  university. 

II 

He  has  given  a  clear  account  of  the  discipline  of  mind  and 
sensibility  that  is  required  for  the  'aesthetic  critic' — that  is, 
for  himself.  An  early  paper  called  Diaphaneite  shadows  forth 
an  ideal  of  character  and  '  culture,'  which  is  severed  from  the 
world  by  its  simplicity,  mental  integrity,  and  lofty  remoteness. 
Pater  speaks  of  '  culture,'  now  and  afterwards,  in  the  accent 
that  others  keep  for  words  like  'grace'  or  'holiness.'  In 
writing  of  Coleridge,  he  celebrates  the  'relative  spirit,'  which 
shuns  fixed  principles  in  metaphysic  or  criticism  and  tries  to 
see  life  and  art  in  their  real  complexities,  taking  each  belief 
or  mental  product,  each  poem  or  school  of  painting,  as  it  comes  ; 
not  judging  it  by  canon,  but  considering  how  it  may  have  grown, 
what  human  need  or  emotion  it  may  serve,  and  how  far  it 
attains  full  or  appropriate  expression.  All  this  the  critic 
exists  to  feel,  and  then  he  has  to  find  words  for  his  feeling  ; 


ESTHETIC  PLEASURE  281 

thus  acquiring,  like  Goethe  it  may  be  hoped,  a  sense  by  which 
'  no  touch  of  the  world  of  form,  colour,  and  passion  is  disre- 
garded '  ;  and,  further,  '  an  intellectual  finesse  of  which  the 
ethical  result  is  a  delicate  and  tender  justice  in  the  criticism 
of  human  life  '  :  a  phrase  to  be  recalled  by  those  who  may 
fancy  that  Pater  was  at  any  time  a  true  Cyrenaic. 

This  view  is  developed  in  Winckelmann  (1867),  in  the  light 
of  the  supposed  teaching  of  Goethe.  Extract,  by  hard  study, 
the  secret  of  every  form  of  culture,  and  enjoy  it  'with  a  kind 
of  passionate  coldness,'  so  reaching  'the  supreme,  artistic, 
view  of  life  '  ;  the  Greeks  will  lead  you  that  way  if  they  are 
well  understood.  In  the  Renaissance  the  cult  is  defined  in 
terms  suggested  by  Aristotle.  The  virtue  of  '  all  works  of 
art,  and  the  fairer  forms  of  nature  and  human  life,'  lies 
in  the  '  special,  unique  impression  of  pleasure  '  that  they 
give.  Pater  did  himself  some  wrong  in  the  sentences,  after- 
wards cancelled,  in  which  he  seemed  to  reduce  the  quest  of 
life  itself  to  a  series  of  disconnected  '  moments  '  of  pleasure. 
Apart  from  any  false  psychology  involved,  his  own  creed 
implies  a  strict  perception  of  the  difference  of  spiritual  or 
artistic  quality  between  pleasures.  This  is  clear  enough  in 
his  study  (1874)  of  Wordsworth.  He  still,  no  doubt,  uses  the 
vintner's  terms  ;  we  are  to  find  the  poet's  '  peculiar  savour  '  ; 
or  the  playgoer's — we  value  art  and  poetry  '  as  they  afford  the. 
spectacle  '  of  '  the  concentrated  presentment  of  passion,'  and 
this  we  are  to  '  witness  with  appropriate  emotions.'  But, 
when  he  comes  to  the  analysis,  it  is  after  all  the  solemn  and 
spiritual  parts  of  Wordsworth  that  are  defined,  and  his  purer 
gift ;  and  the  pleasure  of  the  '  spectacle  '  becomes  nothing  less 
than  the  sharing  of  that  life  of  '  impassioned  contemplation,' 
which  is  judged  by  Wordsworth  himself  to  be  the  highest.  Of 
his  country  folk  we  hear,  for  example  : 

Breaking  from  time  to  time  into  the  pensive  spectacle  of  their 
daily  toil,  their  occupations  near  to  nature,  come  those  great 
elementary  feelings,  lifting  and  solemnising  their  language  and  giving 
it  a  natural  music.  The  great,  distinguishing  passion  came  to 
Michael  by  the  sheepfold,  to  Ruth  by  the  wayside,  adding  these 
humble  children  of  the  furrow  to  the  true  aristocracy  of  passionate 
souls.  ...  A  sort  of  Biblical  depth  and  solemnity  hangs  over  this 
strange,  new,  passionate  pastoral  world,  of  which  he  first  raised 
the  image,  and  the  reflection  of  which  some  of  our  best  modern 
fiction  has  caught  from  him. 

So  with  Shakespeare.  We  are  told  that  he,  too,  'sits  as  a 
spectator,  and  knows  how  the  threads  in  the  design  before  him 


282  PATER 

hold  together  under  the  surface,'  as  he  watches  (in  the  way 
that  the  critic  should  imitate)  the  course  of  events  in  his 
Measure  for  Measure  (1874).  There  seem  to  be  two  fallacies 
in  this.  First  of  all,  you  cannot  simply  sit  aloof,  and  also  have 
the  '  appropriate  emotions,'  combining  enjoyment  with  de- 
tachment. '  Plunge  in,  man,'  we  exclaim,  '  and  take  your 
share  (be  sure  that  Shakespeare  did  so  before  he  earned  his 
right,  if  he  ever  claimed  it,  to  sit  on  the  bank  and  look  on)  ; 
plunge  in,  trouble  about  things,  and  you  will  get  unexpected 
emotions  enough  that  way,  whether  "  appropriate  "  or  not ! 
Else  you  will  exclude  life  itself  from  the  fine  art  of  living.' 
Secondly,  contemplation  is  not  the  same  thing  as  detachment. 
None  the  less,  Pater's  account  of  Angelo  or  of  Isabella,  and  of 
the  '  finer  justice  '  involved  in  the  issue,  and  of  the  varying 
levels  of  workmanship  in  the  play,  continues,  or  revives,  the 
great  tradition  of  Shakespearian  criticism. 

For  he  is  always  proclaiming  his  cult,  and  always  rising  well 
above  it,  so  that  it  does  not  do  him  much  harm  ;  in  its  cruder 
shape  it  was  by  no  means  good  for  everybody.  By  sheer  sensi- 
bility and  wits,  or  perhaps  through  some  human  experience  of 
his  own,  Pater  winds  deep  into  the  spirit  of  Wordsworth,  or 
Raphael,  or  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  His  actual  organon  of  criti- 
cism is  only  half  indicated  in  his  theory.  Moreover,  the  theory 
is  quite  half  true  ;  for  all  the  romantic  critics,  and  many  others, 
had  said  that  pleasure  is  the  end  of  art,  as  knowledge  is  the  end 
of  science.  Aristotle  had  spoken  of  the  '  special  pleasure  '  of 
one  or  another  art  ;  and  the  principle  is  duly  extended  to  this 
or  that  writer  or  production.  It  was  the  slightly  perverse 
formulation  of  this  truth,  and  the  mannered,  hushed  style  of 
Pater's  language,  and  his  Epicurean  pose,  that  bred  suspicion 
and  may  divert  the  reader  from  his  real  gift.  Also  he  talked 
about  art  and  beauty  in  a  way  which  is  not  easy  to  avoid  while 
expounding  him,  but  which  make  us  feel  that  the  words  require 
a  rest.  Some  of  the  '  Pre-Raphaelite  '  group  do  the  like  ;  and 
his  essay,  afterwards  withdrawn  and  certainly  rather  turgid, 
on  Esthetic  Poetry  (written  as  early  as  1868),  may  be  his  tribute 
to  that  connexion  ;  along  with  one  on  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
written  in  1883,  which  is  much  matufef? 


Ill 

The  appreciative  temper,  in  itself,  might  not  seem  to  favour 
the  quest  for  first  principles  ;  it  fears  to  hamper  itself  by  dis- 
covering '  rules,'     But  this  anxiety  is  vain  ;  for  mankind  must 


HIS  POETIC  283 

needs  seek  for  universals,  and  if  you  or  I  find  ourselves  brought 
up  short  in  that  direction,  it  only  means  that  we  have  not  the 
requisite  philosophical  intelligence.  Pater  is  not  thus  checked  ; 
he  has  an  aesthetic  and  a  '  poetic  '  of  his  own.  He  does  not, 
like  Aristotle  and  Hegel,  exalt  the  drama,  but  he  sees  in  music 
the  perfect  type  of  all  art,  precisely  because  in  music  it  is  im- 
possible to  '  distinguish  the  form  from  the  substance,  or 
matter.'  Not  fulness,  then,  of  matter,  but  independence  of 
matter,  is  the  criterion  of  rank  in  an  art.  Thus  poetry  is  '  all 
literary  production  which  attains  the  power  of  giving  pleasure 
by  its  form,  as  distinct  from  its  matter  '  ;  all  invention,  be  it 
in  verse  or  prose,  being  thus  included.  Later  criticism  has 
shown  up  the  equivocations  lurking  in  this  distinction.  How 
can  you  enjoy  the  form  of  Michael  apart  from  its  matter  ? 
You  cannot  enjoy  even  the  metre  by  itself.  You  can  enjoy 
Lucretius  apart  from  his  scientific  purpose  ;  but  that  is  only  a 
part  of  his  '  matter.'  '  Substance  '  is  not  the  same  as  purpose. 
Afterwards,  Pater  insisted  more  fully  on  the  natural  frontiers 
between  poetry  and  prose.  In  his  essay  on  Style,  which  is  a 
classic  in  spite  of  some  over-condensation  and  obscurity,  he 
vindicates  prose  as  a  fine  art,  and  as  one  specially  distinctive, 
in  its  surprising  developments,  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
is  his  own  art,  and  the  ideal  that  he  sets  forth  reveals  his  own 
way  of  working.  This  is  the  well-known  cult  of  the  '  unique 
word ' — the  word  which  alone  is  '  absolutely  proper  to  the 
single  mental  presentation  or  vision  within.'  Search,  as 
Flaubert  did,  for  this  word,  or  idiom,  or  figure,  or  cadence — 
or  rather  wait  for  it ;  it  is  itself  waiting  somewhere — where, 
in  whose  mind,  or  in  what  Platonic  overworld,  is  too  curious  a 
question.  This  theory  has  come  to  be  associated,  not  quite 
fairly,  with  a  slow  and  painful  attitude  in  composing  ;  the 
pace,  however,  is  not  the  real  question,  and  Pater  himself  well 
sees  that  '  Scott's  facility,  Flaubert's  deeply  pondered  evoca- 
tion of  "the  phrase,"  are  equally  good  art.'  In  one  way, 
namely  in  his  respect  for  structure,  Pater  is  a  good  Aristotelian, 
like  Matthew  Arnold.  '  How  wholesome  !  how  delightful !  ' 
he  says,  is  the  intellectual  satisfaction  given,  for  instance,  by  the 
evolution  and  spacing  of  Lycidas.  In  Pater's  own  writings  there 
is  the  concern  for  structure  everywhere .  It  is  easy  to  connect  it 
with  his  attention  to  '  composition  '  in  painting  and  sculpture. 
His  readings  of  the  writers  and  painters  mark  a  renewal  in 
English  criticism  ;  or  rather,  a  recovery  of  that  direct  sym- 
pathy and  understanding  which  we  associate  with  Lamb  and 
his  companions,  and  which  Matthew  Arnold,  with  his  caprices 


284  PATER 

and  ex  cathedra  sentences,  had  a  little  interrupted.     Pater  was 

more  widely  read,  and  more  steadily  trained,  than  the  romantic 

writers^  and  thus  retrieves  some  of  his  inferiority  to  them  in 

spirit  and  passion.     He  had  also,  more  than  most  of  them,  the 

philosophic  bent.     Not,  indeed,  in  the  way  or  the  measure  of 

Coleridge,  whom  he  portrays  as  only  defeated  and  distracted 

by  his  long  pilgrimage   towards   metaphysical  truth.     Pater 

studies,  while  he  abjures,  metaphysics  ;    but  he  studies  them, 

not  for  the  solutions  they  may  offer,  but  as  an  ineradicable  mode 

of  expression  for  certain  needs  of  the  soul.    This  point  of  view 

is  not  enough  for  the  philosopher,  who  indeed  usually  neglects 

it  ;   but  the  critic  it  may  carry  far.     For  if  he  does  not  affirm, 

neither  does  he  refute  ;   he  only  seeks  to  understand.     Pater's 

study  of  Pascal  (1894)  is  a  good  example  of  his  attitude.     The 

Jesuit  doctrine  of  sufficient  grace,  the  Jansenist  doctrine  of 

foreordinance,  do  but  formulate  two  deeply-rooted,  eternally 

recurrent  aspects  or  types  of  character  ;  and  one  of  them  finds 

its  born  exponent  in  a  great  writer,  Pascal.     It  was  this  kind 

of  contrast,  quite  as  much  as  art  and  ritual,  that  drew  Pater  to 

theology.    Jowett  was  wrong  when  he  said,  '  Mr.  Pater,  you 

seem  to  think  that  religion  is  all  idolatry.'     The  interpretations 

of  Bruno  (in  Gaston  de  Latour)  and  of  Spinozism  (in  Sebastian 

van  Storck)  owe  their  value  to  this,  the  truly  '  relative,'  method. 

Still,  Pater  is  more  at  ease  with  Montaigne  and  with  the  poets 

and  fantasts.    They  have  no  systems,  the -question  of  whose 

validity  he  might  be  taxed  with  eluding  ;    and  yet  they  are 

charged  with  thought,  which  is  moulded  in  turn  by  emotion 

and  coloured  by  temperament,  and  which  is  therefore  to  be 

judged,  in  the  long   run,  by  its  expression  ;    and   here   the 

sesthetic  critic  is  unshackled. 


IV 

In  approaching  the  Renaissance,  Pater  does  not  claim  to  do 
the  work  of  the  excavator,  or  the  professional  '  expert  '  ;  some 
errors  of  detail  in  connoisseurship  have  been  found  in  his  book. 
Nor  does  he  try,  like  the  orderly  historian,  to  show  the  whole 
story  in  perspective .  He  leaves  a  great  deal  out.  For  instance, 
while  making  it  plain  that  the  '  pre -Renaissance,'  as  we  may 
call  it,  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  reached  far 
beyond  France,  he  does  not  touch  on  the  many  premonitions 
of  it  which  can  be  traced  in  England  at  that  time.  He  makes 
*  studies  '  ;  he  takes  half  a  dozen  typical  great  figures,  Leonardo, 
Pico,  Michelangelo,  and  paints  each  of  them  on  a  rather  small 


THE  RENAISSANCE  285 

canvas,  every  inch  of  it  crowded.  He  jnakes  Botticelli's 
Venus,  or  Leonardo's  heads,  the  subject  of  a  yoeme,  or  lyrical 
page,  oT  Tns_own_;_._J]Ihese  are  the  burnished  passages  which 
made  the  book  famous;  justly  enough,  but  somewhat  to  the 
obscuring  of  its  intellectual  force  and  grasp. 

For  it  is  a  study,  though  not  a  systematic  study,  of  mind. 
There  is,  above  all,  a  steady  outlook  on  the  various  clashes, 
intermixtures,  and  attempted  reconciliations  of  thought  that 
mark  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  The  mythology 
of  the  artists,  compounded  of  sacred  and  profane  ;  the  play  of 
Platonism  on  Christianity,  of  science  upon  art,  of  Rome  upon 
the  Pleiade,  are  handled  with  a  sure  instinct.  Winckelmann 
is  a  study  of  the  Greek  Renaissance  in  Germany  two  centuries 
later.  The  Renaissance,  properly  so-called,  is  again  presented 
in  the  address  on  Raphael :  the  delicate,  not  strong,  but  carrying 
voice  of  the  lecturer  is  still  in  the  ears  of  those  who  heard  it 
delivered  at  Oxford  in  1892.  Ronsard,  who  figures  in  the 
essay  on  Du  Bellay,  reappears  in  Gaston  ;  where  the  physiog- 
nomies of  Montaigne  and  Bruno  also  come  in,  bringing  the 
survey  down  late  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

Of  the  three  Shakespearian  studies,  that  on  Measure  for 
Measure  has  the  sharpest  edge,  and  is  a  truly  noble  piece  of 
criticism,  bringing  out  not  only  the  atmosphere  and  poetry, 
and  the  disconcerting  inequalities  of  the  play,  but  also,  with 
unexpected  force,  Shakespeare's  '  power  of  moral  interpretation* 
never  more  fully  tasked  than  here .  Among  Pater's  '  apprecia- 
tions,' it  stands  high  as  revealing  the  qualities  for  which  we 
otherwise  turn  to  Marius  or  The  Child  in  the  House — the 
sense  of  pathos  and  the  humanity  ;  for  which  his  '  Epicurean ' 
theories,  even  at  their  best,  are  too  flimsy  a  vessel.  Shake- 
speare's English  Kings  comes  next ;  and  Sir  Frank  Benson's 
subtle  performance  of  Richard  the  Second  is  the  best  comment 
on  Pater's  picture  of  the  royal  '  agsthete,'  enjoying  the  pangs 
of  the  lovely  poetry  which  he  makes  out  of  his  own  weakness. 
As  to  Love's  Labour 's  Lost,  the  light  world  of  that  play  and  its 
sportful  sentiment  receive  justice,  perhaps  for  the  first  time. 
As  to  the  studies  of  Charles  Lamb  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  it  is 
enough  to  guess  how  Lamb  himself  would  have  admired  their 
handiwork  ;  it  resembles  his  own,  in  so  far  as  both  writers  are 
trackers,  with  an  Indian's  eye  and  ear  for  trifles — a  breath,  a 
fallen  twig,  a  half -effaced  trail — that  will  carry  them  to  the 
retreat  of  the  quarry  : 

The  leading  motive  of  Browne's  letter  [Letter  to  a  Friend]  is  the 
deep  impression  he  has  received  during  those  visits,  of  a  sort  of 


286  PATER 

physical  beauty  in  the  coming  of  death,  with  which  he  still  sur- 
prises and  moves  his  reader.  There  had  been,  in  this  case,  a  tardi- 
ness and  reluctancy  in  the  circumstances  of  dissolution,  which  had 
permitted  him,  in  the  character  of  a  physician,  as  it  were  to  assist 
at  the  spiritualising  of  the  bodily  frame  by  natural  process  ;  a 
wonderful  new  type  of  a  kind  of  mortified  grace  being  evolved  by 
the  way.  The  spiritual  body  had  anticipated  the  formal  moment 
of  death  ;  the  alert  soul,  in  that  tardy  decay,  changing  its  vesture 
gradually,  and  as  if  piece  by  piece.  The  infinite  future  had  invaded 
this  life  perceptibly  to  the  senses,  like  the  ocean  felt  far  inland  up 
a  tidal  river. 

There  is  much  in  this  of  Lamb's  perceptiveness,  and  also  of 
his  instinctive,  never  servile  echo  of  the  style  of  the  writer  who 
happens  to  be  before  him.     Pater,  of  course,  has  a  learning, 
and  has  an  intellectual  and  historical  point  of  view,  which  are 
denied  to,  but  are  not  required  by,  the  '  belated  Elizabethan.' 
In  his  criticisms,  Pater  is  never  tempted  artificially  to  separate 
the  soul  from  the  body  of  literature,  the  idea  from  the  expres- 
sion ;    because  he  is  alive  to  both  of  them  equally,  and  also 
to  their  contexture.     Herein  is  his  strength  ;    tor  if  the  mere 
study  of  ideas  ignores  art,  the  mere  study  of  expression  ignores 
the  roots  of  expression  itself,  and  therefore  mutilates  art.     On 
the  other  hand  it  is  true  that  in  some  kinds  of  art,  such  as  the 
lyrical,  the  element  of  ideas  may  be  at  a  minimum,  and  the 
result  is  still  poetry — very  much  poetry  ;  while  the  study  of 
ideas  in  themselves  is  the  affair  of  philosophy  or  history,  whose 
conclusions  need  not  be  stated  in  terms  of  art,  or  in  literary 
form  at  all.    For  the  critic,  therefore,  it  is  the  worse  extreme  to 
neglect  the  form.     But  Pater  is  not  faced  with  such  a  choice 
of  evils.     His  power  of  seeing  both  sides  is  well  discovered  in 
the  Postscript  to  Appreciations,  originally  published  in   1876 
as  Romanticism  :    it  is  a  well-known  attempt  to  define  that 
term,  and  his  phrase  the  '  union  of  strangeness  and  beauty  ' 
has  become  current  since.     More  properly,  it  is  'the  addition 
of  strangeness  to  beauty,'  over  and  beyond  the  classical  quality 
of  '  order  in  beauty,'  that  '  constitutes  the  romantic  character 
in  ait  '  :    the  root -instinct  at  work  being  that  of  '  curiosity.' 
This,  no  doubt,  is  one  of  the  historic   '  notes,'  as  Cardinal 
Newman  might  have  said,  of  that  new  or  revived  ingredient 
in  our  modern  literature,  which  we  trace  from  the  time  of  the 
poet  Collins  onwards .     But  then  it  is  only  one  of  the  '  notes  '  ; 
and  those  who  have  worked  out  over  the  ground  may  well 
become  shy  of  using  the  term  '  romantic  '  at  all,  since  it  covers 
so  many  phenomena,  and  moreover  has  to  be  defined  in  opposi- 


MARIUS  *2$1 

tion  to  the  term  '  classical,'  which  itself  has  half  a  dozen  senses 
— themselves  well-discerned  in  Pater's  essay.  Still  '  strange 
beauty '  is  clearly  the  quality  that  Pater  himself  felt  most 
keenly,  and  liked  most,  in  this  body  of  literature. 


Marius  the  Epicurean  is  as  far  from  the  propagandist  stories 
written  by  Newman  or  Wiseman  about  early  Christian  con- 
verts, as  it  is  from  the  laborious  resuscitations  of  the  antique 
world  once  familiar  in  Charicles  or  Galium.  Jk  is  a  new  off- 
shoot of  the  historical  novel.  It  exhibits  the  outer  and  inner 
life  of  Rome  in  the  day  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  Banquets,  pro- 
cessions, ceremonies,  the  lecture  hall,  the  Christian  catacombs, 
the  Italian  landscape — these  are  the  setting,  which  is  exquisitely 
done  ;  and  the  learning,  which  is  profound  and  alert,  never 
troubles  the  reader.  In  the  midst  are  the  figures  of  Apuleius, 
Fronto,  the  emperor,  and  Lucian,  whose  words  are  often  given 
through  actual  translation.  These  speakers,  again,  illuminate 
the  real  subject,  which  is  the  spirit  of  the  age,  in  its  interior 
cEanges  ancn3Tsttir^ances7~asthey  are  seen  reflected,  facet 
after  facet,  in  the  rather  shadowy  Marius.  Each  of  the  dying 
philosophies  says  its  utmost  for  itself  in  turn.  The  nobler 
pretensions  of  the  Cyrenaic,  which  passes  into  the  Epicurean, 
scheme,  are  sympathetically  arrayed,  with  a  definite  side- 
glance  at  Pater's  own  day  and  mental  experience.  But  for 
Marius  they  are  not  enough  ;  nor  yet  is  Stoicism  enough,  with 
its  tendency  to  shelve  evil  and  to  condone,  as  Marcus  Aurelius 
did,  the  cruelties  of  the  games.  All  that  goes  against  the  old 
Roman  piety,  and  the  strain  of  kindness,  in  Marius.  He  seeks  for 
some  more  ideal  satisfaction.  Where  shall  he  find  the  impulse 
to  a  cheerful  courage,  less  careless  than  that  of  the  Greek  ; 
and  some  compelling  motive  to  self-sacrifice  ?  In  the  end  he 
dies  of  the  plague,  which  he  has  risked  for  the  sake  of  a  Christian 
companion,  Cornelius.  Marius  has  visited  a  Christian  house, 
and  felt  its  charm,  and  he  conceives  a  new  ideal  of  brotherhood, 
of  chastity,  and  of  piety  towards  the  dead ;  though,  indeed, 
he  is  not  actually  received  into  the  new  faith.  This  somewhat 
hackneyed  topic  Pater  manages  to  refresh  ;  but  his  pictures 
of  the  unregenerate  viveurs  and  heathen  thinkers  are  still  more 
vivid  and  natural. 

The  story  of  Marius  the  Epicurean  is  carefully  laid  out  and 
built  up.  The  translations  bulk  large,  but  we  do  not  wish 
them  away.     Cupid  and  Psyche  is  a  story  within  a  story,  like 


288  PATER 

Fielding's  Man  of  the  Hill,  and  is  more  in  keeping  with  its 
context.  There  is  often  a  tint  of  the  irony  which  is  said  to 
have  marked  Pater's  talk  ;  it  is  polite,  a  little  feline,  like  that 
of  Renan.  The  inlaying  and  artifice  are  less  apparent  than 
elsewhere,  and  the  thought  is  less  overloaded.  Most  of  the 
varieties  of  Pater's  style  are  to  be  seen  in  this  book,  including 
the  really  noble  one  which  he  always  commands  when  describ- 
ing the  nascent  stir  of  thought  in  his  boyish  heroes,  and  which 
is  seen  again  in  the  unfinished  Gaston  de  Latour.  Here  the  same 
gift  is  applied  on  a  smaller  scale.  The  time  is  now  that  of 
Charles  the  Ninth,  which  one  of  Pater's  favourite  authors, 
Merimee,  had  depicted  in  his  novel.  In  Gaston  the  fighting  and 
politics  leave  little  impression.  The  conflict  is  again  intel- 
lectual. Catholicism,  humanism,  scepticism,  contend,  with 
results  that  are  hardly  apparent,  for  the  spirit  of  the  young 
Gaston,  who  is  attractive  of  course,  but  otherwise  somewhat 
questionable.  He  is  meant  for  the  Church  ;  already,  indeed, 
in  due  order,  '  the  fair  surplice  ripples  down  over  him.'  But  he 
is  drawn  by  '  the  beauty  of  the  world  and  its  sorrow,  solaced  a 
little  by  religious  faith,  itself  so  beautiful  a  thing.'  (All  the 
'  preciosity  '  of  the  author,  and  of  the  Eighties  in  Oxford,  seems 
to  echo  in  the  phrase.)  Gaston  first  visits  Ronsard  ;  then  he 
lives  a  long  while  with  Montaigne  ;  at  last  he  comes  to  sit  under 
Giordano  Bruno.  The  portrait  of  Montaigne  is  one  of  Pater's 
best.  The  scenery,  the  hospitality,  the  talk  of  the  chateau,  are 
perfectly  drawn,  and  the  creed  of  the  host,  with  his  canon  of 
'  suspended  judgement,'  seems  their  natural  product.  Along 
with  Gaston  must  be  named  the  '  imaginary  portraits  '  of 
'  Denys  l'Auxerrois  '  and  others,  where  Pater  shows  a  curious 
taste  for  wild  cruel  legend  and  the  dark  corners  of  human 
nature — for  Pan  when  he  is  showing  his  teeth.  So  Denys, 
the  young  organ-builder,  degenerates,  falls  mad,  seems  pos- 
sessed, and  is  at  last  torn  up  by  the  mob  who  accidentally 
catch  sight  of  his  blood.  All  this,  perhaps,  is  the  underside 
of  the  cult  of  beauty. 

VI 

The  Greek  Studies,  beginning  in  1876  with  one  on  Dionysus, 
spread  over  nearly  twenty  years  ;  some  are  upon  myth  and 
folklore,  as  revealed  in  art,  poetry,  or  custom  ;  some  on  sculp- 
ture. The  Bacchanals  of  Euripides  is  a  sequel  to  Dionysus. 
Hippolytus  Veiled  is  an  imaginative,  composite  retelling  of  the 
tale  from  all  the  records.  Demeter  and  Persephone  traces  a 
mythical  idea  from  its  primitive  state,  through  poetry  and 


GREEK  STUDIES  289 

marble,  up  or  down,  to  its  full  symbolic  development.  The 
Marbles  of  Aegina  and  its  companions  form  part  of  an  un- 
finished work.  In  all  of  these  Pater's  large  learning  lies  easily 
at  the  service  of  his  interpreting  gift.  The  historical  imagina- 
tion is  nourished  at  every  point  by  knowledge..  The  concep- 
tions, still  fresh  in  Pater's  day,  of  animism,  of  evolution  and 
of  anthropomorphic  fancy,  he  applies  continually.  Perhaps 
he  reads  a  good  deal  of  his  own  into  the  early  history  of  myth  ; 
but  his  peculiar  eloquence  is  seen  to  great  advantage  :  he 
speaks  thus  of  the  original  Dionysus  : 

He  is  the  soul  of  the  individual  vine,  first ;  the  young  vine  at  the 
house-door  of  the  newly  married,  for  instance,  as  the  vine-grower 
stoops  over  it,  coaxing  and  nursing  it,  like  a  pet  animal  or  a  little 
child  ;  afterwards,  the  soul  of  the  whole  species,  the  spirit  of  fire 
and  dew,  alive  and  leaping  in  a  thousand  vines,  as  the  higher 
intelligence,  brooding  more  deeply  over  things,  pursues,  in  thought, 
the  generation  of  sweetness  and  strength  in  the  veins  of  the  tree, 
the  transformation  of  water  into  wine,  little  by  little  ;  noting  all 
the  influences  upon  it  of  the  heaven  above  and  the  earth  beneath  ; 
and  shadowing  forth,  in  each  pause  of  the  process,  an  intervening 
person — what  is  to  us  but  the  secret  chemistry  of  nature  being  to 
them  the  mediation  of  living  spirits. 

These  mythical  figures,  as  well  as  the  nobler  gods,  however 
they  be  imagined  or  embodied  by  art,  come  in  each  case  to 
represent  to  Pater  what  he  calls  the  '  spiritual  form  '  of  certain 
conceptions,  and  such  conceptions  contain  the  true  bequest 
of  Greece  to  the  European  world.  Thus  Apollo  becomes  at 
last 

the  '  spiritual  form  '  of  inward  or  intellectual  light,  in  all  its  mani- 
festations. He  represents  all  those  specially  European  ideas,  of 
a  reasonable,  personal  freedom,  as  understood  in  Greece  ;  of  a 
reasonable  polity  ;  of  the  sanity  of  soul  and  body,  through  the 
cure  of  disease  and  the  sense  of  sin  ;  of  the  perfecting  of  both  by 
reasonable  exercise  or  ascesis  ;  his  religion  is  a  sort  of  embodied 
equity,  its  aim  the  realisation  of  fair  reason  and  just  consideration 
of  the  truth  of  things  everywhere. 

— '  Represents  ' — but  to  whom  ?  To  what  Greek  did  Apollo 
mean  all  that  ?  The  critic  dreams  before  the  marble,  and 
reads  modern  significance  into  it,  just  as  we  are  tempted  to 
see  much  in  Hamlet  of  which  Shakespeare  never  thought. 

Plato  and  Platonism  is  a  course  of  lectures  circling  round  the 
Republic,  which  is  a  staple  book  in  the  Oxford  '  school  of 
humaner  letters.'  A  sketch  of  the  Pre-Socratics  and  of  the 
Platonic  Socrates  and  his  thoughts,  the  book  comes  nearer  than 

VOL.    I.  T 


290  PATER 

the  rest  of  Pater's  to  the  common  forms  of  exposition.  The 
leading  idea  is  that  Plato,  and  Plato's  language,  and  the 
Parthenon,  and  the  Greek  mythology  all  form  part  of  a  har- 
monious whole,  which  it  is  necessary  for  the  modern  world, 
and  for  the  author's  happiness,  to  understand.  The  Greek  spirit 
is  not  only  a  matter  for  the  scholar,  but  is  to  be  distilled  into 
'the  uses  of  our  lives.'  Pater's  own  language,  here  as  else- 
where, has  what  he  calls  '  a  certain  crafty  reserve  in  its  exercise, 
after  the  manner  of  the  true  expert.' 


VII 

His  general  way  of  writing  is  faithfully  enough  indicated  by 
his  essay  on  Style.  He  belongs  to  the  cell -building  tribe  of 
authors,  whom  we  know  better  amongst  the  poets  ;  Gray  and 
Tennyson  belong  to  it.  That  is,  he  seeku  for  exact  and  perfect 
Tightness,  beginning  with  the  single  word,  and  working  out- 
wards. Of  Dante  he  says,  in  his  introduction  to  Mr.  Shad- 
well's  delicate  translation  of  the  Purgatory  : 

He  is  one  of  those  artists  whose  general  effect  largely  depends  on 
vocabulary,  on  the  minute  particles  of  which  his  work  is  wrought, 
on  the  colour  and  outline  of  single  words  and  phrases. 

This  holds  good  of  Pater  himself.  A  '  minute  and  sensitive 
fidelity,'  as  in  the  same  essay  he  calls  it,  to  the  single  word, 
to  the  perfection  of  the  cell,  is  ever  with  him.  Another  of  his 
phrases,  applied  to  Lamb,  is  '  the  value  of  reserve  in  literature,' 
and  this  he  practises  even  to  the  point  of  sacrifice.  Bold, 
emphatic  words  are  kept  out,  or  only  used  for  special  effects  ; 
in  one  page,  on  Merimee,  come  naked,  fierce,  slavish,  duped, 
horror,  blood,  spaced  over  it  artfully  ;  but  this  is  exceptional. 
Everywhere,  as  may  suit  the  matter,  be  it  description,  or 
philosophy,  or  criticism,  the  exact  tint  or  wash  of  vocabulary  is 
observed.  Pater  may  be  said  to  invent  new  resources  of  prose 
for  each  of  these  species,  superimposing  all  kinds  of  suggestion 
and  overtones  on  the  bare  meaning,  and  not  being  well  satisfied, 
until  he  has  done  so,  that  the  meaning  is  really  won.  And  the 
sentences  are  built  with  great  variety,  with  much  characteristic 
parenthesis  and  interjection,  sometimes  into  excessive  com- 
plexity, with  a  direct  avoidance  of  rhetorical  movement,  and 
falling  away  down  to  a  gentler  level,  like  the  end  of  an  Italian 
sonnet.  They  are  often  simple  ;  but  even  then,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  hardly  one  of  them  could  have  been  written  by 
any  one  else,  unless  it  were  an   imitator  of   Pater  himself. 


SIMPLICITY  .  291 

He  had  fled  to  the  south  from  the  first  forbidding  days  of  a  hard 
winter  which  came  at  last.  Or  again  :  Angels  might  be  met  by 
the  way,  under  English  elm  or  beech-tree  ;  the  rhythm  alone 
would  make  these  individual.  Some  of  Pater's  pictures,  like 
that  of  London,  remind  one  of  Girtin's  noblest  water-colours  : 

the  great  city  with  its  weighty  atmosphere,  and  portent  of  storm  in 
the  rapid  light  on  dome  and  bleached  stone  steeples. 

The  ultimate  test,  it  may  be  thought,  of  such  a  method  is 
whether  the  result  sounds  natural — natural  not  only  to  the 
author,  for  authors  acquire  a  terrible  second  nature — but  to  the 
reader  who  has  goodwill.  Pater,  when  he  elaborates,  cannot 
always  be  said  duly  to  meet  this  test,  or  to  earn  the  praise  that 
he  gives  to  Pascal's  prose,  when  he  calls  it  '  a  pattern  of 
absolutely  unencumbered  expressiveness.'  We  could  find 
passages  confused  in  their  '  minuteness,'  obscure  in  their 
conveyance  of  thought,  where  the  labour  is  painfully  felt  and 
is  not  therefore  repaid.  Pater  cannot  be  read  aloud  quickly — 
his  movement  is  too  clogged,  and  his  music  too  ritualistic  ally 
solemn  for  that.  It  is  not,  however,  a  fault,  but  a  characteristic. 
Neither  is  elaboration  a  fault,  when  it  is  the  right  and  only 
way  of  saying  something  subtle.  This,  on  Pascal,  could 
scarcely  be  simplified  without  loss,  though  it  is  not  simple, 
or  like  Pascal's  own  style,  in  the  least : — 

Observe,  he  is  not  a  sceptic  converted,  a  returned  infidel,  but  is 
seen  there  as  if  at  the  very  centre  of  a  perpetually  maintained  tragic 
crisis  holding  the  faith  steadfastly,  but  amid  the  well-poised  points 
of  essential  doubt  all  around  him  and  it.  It  is  no  mere  calm  super- 
session of  a  state  of  doubt  by  a  state  of  faith  ;  the  doubts  never 
die,  they  are  only  just  kept  down  in  a  perpetual  agonia.  Every- 
where in  the  '  Letters  '  he  had  seemed  so  great  a  master — a  master 
of  himself — never  at  a  loss,  taking  the  conflict  so  lightly,  with  so 
light  a  heart  :  in  the  great  Atlantean  travail  of  the  '  Thoughts  ' 
his  feet  sometimes  'are  almost  gone.'  In  his  soul's  agony,  theo- 
logical abstractions  seem  to  become  personal  powers.  It  was  as  if 
just  below  the  surface  of  the  green  undulations,  the  stately  woods, 
of  his  own  strange  country  of  Auvergne,  the  volcanic  fires  had 
suddenly  discovered  themselves  anew. 

Nevertheless,  the  great  things  in  literature  are  usually  simple 
in  expression  ;  and  Pater's  powers  of  thought  and  style  are 
best  displayed  when  he  comes  nearer  to  the  traditional  manner, 
reminding  us  of  Thackeray  at  his  best,  and  hinting  how  he 
might  possibly  have  distinguished  himself  in  that  effort  to  'treat 
contemporary  life  nobly,'  which  he  ascribes  to  Tennyson. 
It  is  in  his  brief  imaginative  sketches,  like  The  Child  in  the 


292  SYMONDS 

House,  or  Apollo  in  Picardy,  that  he  thus  succeeds.  The 
aspirations  of  youth,  and  the  hidden  memories  of  boyhood, 
appeal  to  him  especially,  and  link  these  little  pieces  for  a 
moment  with  such  famous  productions  of  the  romantic  move- 
ment as  Dream-Children.  Emerald  Uthwart,  the  boy  who  has 
been  condemned  to  military  disgrace  for  bravery  in  defiance  of 
instructions,  comes  home  to  die  : 

In  his  worn  military  dress  he  seems  a  part  of  the  ruin  under 
which  he  creeps  for  a  night's  rest  as  darkness  comes  on.  He 
actually  came  round  again  to  the  scene  of  his  disgrace,  of  the  execu- 
tion ;  looked  in  vain  for  the  precise  spot  where  he  had  knelt  ;  then, 
almost  envying  him  who  lay  there,  for  the  unmarked  grave  ;  passed 
over  it  perhaps  unrecognised  for  some  change  in  that  terrible  place, 
or  rather  in  himself  ;  wept  then  as  never  before  in  his  life  ;  dragged 
himself  on  once  more,  till  suddenly  the  whole  country  seems  to 
move  under  the  rumour,  the  very  thunder,  of  the  '  crowning  victory,' 
as  he  is  made  to  understand. 

It  is  not  easy  to  fix  on  any  definite  or  guiding  models  for 
Pater's  English.  It  is  unlike  that  of  some  of  the  writers  whom 
he  most  admired  ;  one  of  them  was  Newman.  Nor  is  it  like 
that  of  any  of  his  favourite  Greeks  or  Frenchmen— Plato  or 
Victor  Hugo.  He  is  removed  from  all  of  these,  if  only  by  his 
inveterate  tessellating  habit.  The  tones  of  Ruskin  are  traceable 
now  and  then  in  his  earlier  pages,  but  Ruskin  is  not  his  master  ; 
that  full  tide  of  eloquence,  sweeping  precious  things  and  rubbish 
along  with  it,  is  not  for  him.  Lamb  and  the  fantasts  count  for 
something  more.  But  Pater's  origins  are  composite,  and 
eclectic,  and  obscured.  Historically,  he  represents  a  sharp 
reaction  from  the  dissipation  and  rhetoric  of  so  much  Victorian 
prose.  For  he  wishes  not  to  do  much,  but  to  do  what  he  does 
perfectly  ;  to  determine  on  a  clear,  noble,  not  necessarily  a 
large,  design,  and  to  pack  it  close  with  beauty  and  meaning, 
economically.  The  lesson  was  wanted  ;  who  shall  say  it  has 
been  learned  ?  No  one  taught  it  better  ;  yet  we  come  back 
with  some  relief  to  the  freer,  more  careless  masters  of  prose,  as 
they  stride  over  the  open  down,  whistling. 

vrn 

This  Renaissance  cult  of  beauty,  as  applied  to  art  and  letters 
and  fortified  by  the  historical  spirit,  is  also  conspicuous  in  John 
Addington  Symonds  (1840-93),  whose  passion  for  the  Greeks 
was  redoubled  by  his  special  conversance  with  the  revival  of 
learning.     His  writing  has  suffered  from  the  fatal  contrast  of  its 


GREEKS  AND  RENAISSANCE  293 

looser  texture  with  the  closer  thinking  and  surer  handiwork  of 
Pater,  who  follows  the  same  cult,  though  not  wholly  in  the  same 
spirit,  and  many  of  whose  interests  are  the  same.  Symonds 
is  said  to  have  disliked  this  comparison,  and  also  the  peculiar 
savour  of  Pater's  style  ;  and  in  spite  of  his  dispersion  of 
effort,  he  has  advantages  of  his  own.  He  was  a  genuine 
historian,  and  wrote  a  long  connected  history  ;  he  is  a  very 
good  translator  of  poetry,  and  a  poet  in  his  own  right  ;  and  he 
does  not,  like  Pater,  jealously  keep  his  own  secret,  but  confides 
it,  in  arresting  fashion,  to  the  world.  In  a  volume,  printed  in 
the  year  1893,  on  Walt  Whitman,  Symonds  tells  how  he  was 
brought  up,  at  Harrow  and  Balliol,  in  the  traditions  of  the  great 
English  caste,  and  how  the  reading  of  Whitman  set  him  free 
from  the  incubus,  in  a  way  that  his  favourite  Greeks  and 
Italians  had  failed  to  do .  Travel,  made  imperative  by  recurrent 
lung  trouble,  carried  him  to  Italy,  where  he  came  to  live  more 
and  more,  and  where  he  died.  There,  in  the  hills,  too  seldom 
able  to  descend  to  the  city  libraries,  he  worked  with  unfailing 
courage,  living  the  open  life  of  the  country,  mixing  with 
contadini,  sharing  their  talk  in  little  taverns  with  some  large 
old  book  open  on  his  knees,  and  indomitably  getting  through 
his  principal  task,  the  History  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy 
(1875-86). 

He  had  begun,  however,  in  1873  with  Studies  of  the  Greek 
Poets.  The  aim,  which  is  successfully  attained,  of  this  seiies 
of  reprinted  articles  was  '  to  bring  Greek  literature  home  to  the 
general  reader,  and  to  apply  to  the  Greek  poets  the  same  sort  of 
criticism  as  that  which  modern  classics  receive.'  The  style  is 
too  prolix  and  too  splendid  ;  there  is  a  sort  of  pseudo-Ruskinian, 
inflamed  fine  writing,  which  only  a  Greek  of  the  decadence 
could  have  applauded.  There  is  also  the  subtler  fault  of 
implicitly  imputing  to  the  Greeks  the  author's  own  code,  at 
once  formal  and  feverish,  of  beauty-worship.  For  all  this,  the 
substance  of  his  praises  is  continually  true,  his  delight  m  his 
subject  is  infectious,  and  his  versions  from  the  poets  are 
admirably  done . 

The  long  work  on  the  Renaissance,  in  many  volumes,  is 
flanked  by  separate  studies  of  Michelangelo  and  Boccaccio  ; 
nor  should  Symonds 's  sketch  of  Italian  history  in  the 
Encyclopcedia  Britannica  be  overlooked.  Though  he  worked 
under  such  serious  difficulties,  he  managed  to  amass  or  reach 
many  of  the  necessary  books  and  documents.  The  political 
history,  though  well  sketched,  does  not  interest  him  so  much  as 
the  course  of  learning,  art.  and  letters.     Italy,  during  the  last 


294  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

thirty  years,  lias  poured  forth  an  immense  mass  of  writing  on 
her  Renaissance,  and  Symonds,  in  point  of  lore,  is  sometimes 
antiquated.  He  lacks,  too,  the  grouping  and  condensing  power 
of  Burckhardt.  But  his  first-hand  appreciations  are  still 
fresh.  His  clear  study  of  Bruno,  the  last  notable  mind  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance,  compares  well  with  Pater's  difficult  pages 
on  the  same  subject,  and  his  study  of  Tasso  is  not  inferior. 
As  a  full  and  rapid  survey  of  its  theme,  the  work  has  not  yet 
been  superseded  in  English . 

Symonds  also  wrote  much,  sometimes  laxly  but  never  tamely, 
on  the  English  poets.  His  short  volumes  on  Sidney,  Ben 
Jonson,  and  Shelley,  and  his  longer  one  on  The  Predecessors  of 
Shakespeare  have  much  the  same  defects  of  facility  and  fluency, 
and  the  same  quality  of  fervour  and  intrinsic  soundness.  Of 
more  lasting  value  are  his  sonnets  in  the  collection  called  Animi 
Figura  (1882),  which  are  subtle,  analytic,  and  confidential, 
and  complete  the  ample  confessions  of  his  prose.  With  all  his 
pluck  and  surface  cheerfulness,  Symonds  was  often  a  sick  man, 
in  mind  as  well  as  in  body,  and  that  is  why  he  is  personally 
interesting.  He  has  more  than  his  share  of  the  malady  of 
his  time  ; — and  whence  comes  that  malady  ?  From  the  long 
stagnant  peace,  which  furnished  no  rallying -point  in  action  for 
the  national  soul  ?  or  from  the  exhaustion  following  on  a 
sanguine  inventive  epoch  ?  or  from  over-exoticism  of  sympathy  ? 
or  from  the  habit  of  introspection,  which  at  such  a  period  gains 
ground  ;  or  from  what  ?  Each  of  these  elements  seems  to  be 
in  operation  at  one  time  or  another.  Rossetti's  sonnets, 
Thomson's  pessimism,  Pater's  '  Cyrenaicism,'  Patmore's  reli- 
gious-erotic exaltations,  Symonds's  over-excitement, — all  these 
precede  and  influence  the  tone  of  certain  later  poets,  critics, 
novelists,  and  penitents,  whose  career  lies  beyond  our  chrono- 
logical limits.  But  the  phenomenon  comes  clear  into  view  in 
the  Seventies,  and  still  more  so  in  the  Eighties  ;  nor  can  it  be 
disguised  by  the  survival  into  the  Nineties  of  a  band  of  veterans. 
Oxford  men  of  that  date  well  know,  if  they  cannot  put  into 
words,  the  symptoms  and  the  atmosphere  ;  for  Oxford,  cer- 
tainly, was  one  home  of  that  singular  sleeping  sickness,  with 
its  dreams,  the  worst  of  them  now  all  blown  away  by  the  great 
war  ;  or  so  we  hope. 

IX 

We  can,  at  least,  now  turn  to  Cambridge  for  contrast — to 
a  critic  less  troubled  by  dreams,  a  man  of  severer  if  less  imagina- 
tive cast,  whose  philosophical  books  have  been  already  named. 


BIOGRAPHIES  295 

This  is  Sir  Leslie  Stephen1  (1832-1904),  whose  essays,  one  may 
safely  predict,  are  bound  to  wear  well,  and  to  outwear  much 
fine  writing,  what  with  their  acumen  and  sound  judgement,  and 
what  with  their  excellent  Queen  Anne  English,  so  finished  and 
quietly  ironical.  Stephen's  true  line  was  not  soon  apparent. 
His  Sketches  from  Cambridge,  by  a  Don  (1865),  reprinted  from 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  his  mountaineering  book,  The  Play- 
ground of  Europe  (1871),  show  his  quality,  and  are  most  agree- 
able reading.  The  easy,  trained  stride  of  the  pedestrian, 
covering  the  miles  imperceptibly,  may  serve  as  an  image  of  his 
general  style.  He  was  also  a  born  editor  and  literary  pilot. 
In  1871  he  began  to  conduct  the  Cornhill,  writing  some  of 
the  best  articles  himself.  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  and  Henry 
James,  soon  to  be  eminent,  were  among  the  contributors.  The 
flower  of  Stephen's  critical  studies  is  contained  in  the  three 
series  of  his  Hours  in  a  Library  (1874,  1876,  1879).  In  1875  he 
was  able  to  discard  the  clerical  orders  which  he  had  assumed  in 
youth  ;  but  in  spirit  he  had  broken  loose  before.  His  riper 
mind  in  speculative  matters  is  seen  in  his  Essays  on  Freethinking 
and  Plain  Speaking  (1873),  in  his  most  massive  work,  the 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  (1876,  see 
ante,  Ch.  rv.).  The  final  fruit,  on  the  philosophical  side,  was 
The  Science  of  Ethics  (1882),  while  Stephen  put  much  of  his 
mind  and  heart  into  the  briefer  Agnostic's  Apology  (1893). 

For  many  years  Stephen  conducted  that  great  and  trium- 
phant venture,  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  which 
was  projected  in  1881  and  began  to  appear  in  1886,  and  which 
ate  up  much  of  his  time  and  energy.  We  are  told  that  he  con- 
tributed no  less  than  '  378  articles,'  covering  over  '  a  thousand 
pages.'  He  excelled  in  the  craft  of  biography,  especially  on  a 
miniature  scale.  In  the  Dictionary  he  delivers  endless  judge- 
ments in  a  brief  Tacitean  manner  without  a  touch  of  arrogance. 
He  found  more  room  in  his  little  books,  in  the  English  Men  of 
Letters  series,  on  Hobbes,  Pope,  Swift,  Johnson,  and  George 
Eliot,  all  justly  prized ;  and  more  room  yet  in  his  full  bio- 
graphies of  Fawcett,  and  of  his  brother,  Sir  James  Fitzjames 
Stephen,  which  is  conceived  in  a  candid  spirit,  and  which 
sketches  the  history  of  the  gifted  family.  Later,  when  re- 
leased from  dictionary  work,  Stephen  came  back  to  philosophy, 
and  continued  his  earlier  studies  in  The  English  Utilitarians 
(1900),  which  is  the  best  existing  presentation  of  Bentham,  the 
two  Mills,  and  other  economists.  The  Studies  of  a  Biographer 
belong  to  his  latter  years,  and  show  an  even  greater  economy 
of  stroke  and  a  yet  more  gently  searching  humour. 


296  LESLIE  STEPHEN 

Stephen  was  intellectually  a  child  of  the  '  age  of  prose  and 
reason.'  His  natural  taste  is  for  tough  arguers  like  Bishop 
Butler  ;  he  also  relishes  paradox-mongers  like  Mandeville  ;  and 
he  can  digest  the  obscurest  forgotten  deist  without  any  visible 
trouble.  His  dictionary  notices  of  Bolingbroke,  Hume,  and 
Gibbon  reflect  this  aspect  of  Stephen's  mind.  In  a  subdued 
way,  he  inherits  their  spirit  of  mischief  and  their  objection 
to  insipidity.  He  well  understands  Pope  and  Johnson,  the 
apostles  of  wit  and  sense.  His  sharp  sense  of  their  limitations 
comes  as  part  of  his  birthright  as  a  man  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

He  has  to  make  his  account  with  ideas  to  which  those  who 
enjoyed  the  '  peace  of  the  Augustans  '  were  strangers  : — with 
the  enthusiasm  for  science,  with  the  religion  of  humanity  and 
its  secular  idealism.  The  difference  between  the  old  scepticism 
and  the  new  may  be  seen  by  comparing  Hume's  Essays  with 
An  Agnostic's  Apology.  Many  of  the  negative  conclusions 
are  similar  ;  but  the  old  complacency  is  gone.  There  is  no 
peace  now,  but  the  stress  of  battle  instead.  The  need  has 
arisen  of  constructing  some  positive  faith  that  shall  consist 
with  those  negations.  Stephen  and  Huxley  are  the  strongest 
among  the  writers  who  strove  not  only  to  clear  the  mind  of 
dogma,  but  to  build  upon  the  ground  which  is  thus  left  empty. 
'  Bear,'  such  writers  seem  to  say,  '  the  chill  of  life  as  the  climber 
bears  the  risk  of  frostbite,  and  always  keep  your  head.  If  you 
lose  your  companion  in  the  avalanche,  mourn  him  with  the 
courage,  though  not  with  the  apathy,  of  the  Stoic,  and  then 
go  on.  Get  up  another  hill,  and  get  down  again,  and  at 
evening  you  can  sup,  perhaps  cheerfully,  or  at  least  humor- 
ously, in  the  wayside  inn.  Afterwards  there  is  always  sleep, 
which  is  always  good.  You  have  got  through  your  day ; 
and  perhaps  you  have  added  a  new  peak,  or  valley,  to  the 
map  ;  and  anyhow  you  were  up  in  time  to  see  the  sun  rise. 
And  you  have  not  got  through  upon  drugs.'  All  this  is  Mere- 
dithian  too,  and  Stephen  was  Meredith's  intimate  friend. 

As  a  critic,  Stephen  is  rather  of  the  judicial  than  of  the 
imaginative  order.  His  papers  on  Shelley  and  Balzac  show 
too  jealous  a  sense  of  their  deficiencies  in  the  eye  of  reason. 
He  does  not  much  like  an  artist  to  be  extravagant :  he  is  shy 
of  being  dragged  after  the  chariot  of  a  romantic  rebel ;  and, 
even  with  the  greatest  poets,  he  does  not  overmuch .  let  himself 
go.  He  is  a  Wordsworthian  ;  he  makes  the  obvious  reserves, 
but  his  praise  of  the  poet  has  an  unusual  note  of  intensity.  He 
is  deeply,  though  not  pedantically,  ethical :   he  has  the  '  noble- 


DOWDEN— CONCEPTION  OF  CRITICISM  297 

ness  '  that  distinguishes  the  best  minds  of  the  time,  though  he 
is  wholly  unaware  of  the  fact  and  would  have  mocked  at  the 
description.  His  particular  combination  of  critical  balance, 
humanity,  and  philosophic  grasp  is  best  seen  in  his  judgement 
of  George  Eliot.  He  had  lived  through  her  fame  and  its  decline, 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  he  came  forward  as  a  guarded  but  sincere 
champion  of  her  slighted  merits.  His  sympathy  with  his 
subject  is  guaranteed,  for  he  had  passed  through  somewhat 
the  same  course  of  spiritual  history.  The  problem  was  simpler 
in  the  case  of  Crabbe  or  of  Miss  Austen  ;  with  such  writers  he 
is  perfectly  at  home,  taking  them  frankly  as  they  are  and  un- 
troubled by  the  sense  of  what  they  do  not  understand,  though 
he  well  knows  what  that  is. 

X 

Some  critics  of  more  professorial  stamp  claim  final  attention. 
The  abundant  production  of  Edward  Dowden1  (1843-1913) 
belongs  mainly  to  the  following  period  ;  but  his  wide  sound 
scholarship  and  many-sided  sensibility  are  already  to  be  seen 
in  Shakespeare,  His  Mind  and  Art  (1875),  and  in  A  Shakespeare 
Primer.  Dowden  mastered  the  Shakespearian  lore  of  the 
Germans,  but  used  it  without  pedantry  and  with  an  Irish 
sense  of  humour  ;  he  was  long  professor  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin.  He  was  the  first  of  our  critics  to  expound  in  a  clear 
attractive  way  the  general  phases  of  Shakespeare's  '  mind  and 
art,'  working  on  the  scientific  basis  for  the  canon  and  order  of 
the  plays  which  had  been  established  by  the  spadework  of  a 
generation.  Widely  and  deeply  read,  a  skilled  editor  of 
Shakespeare's  texts,  and  an  eminent  professor,  Dowden  also 
had  a  keen  sense  of  all  intellectual  and  artistic  currents,  and 
traces  them  with  much  insight.  He  suffers  from  some  want 
of  salience ;  he  writes  with  a  soft,  not  with  a  sharp  pen ;  ho 
is  capable  of  sentimentality,  and  sometimes  rather  diffuse. 
But  his  taste  and  skill  are  remarkable  ;  and  he  has  left  a  little 
intimate  poetry,  delicate  in  execution.  His  monographs  on 
Shelley,  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and  Browning  appeared  mostly 
in  the  Eighties  and  Nineties  ;  his  French  Revolution  and  English 
Literature  (1897)  is  a  good  example  of  his  method.  A  paper  on 
The  Interpretation  of  Literature,  in  Transcripts  and  Studies, 
gives  Dowden 's  conception  of  criticism,  and  links  it,  as  will  be 
seen,  with  the  more  strictly  aesthetic  canon,  which  had  already 
been  stated  by  others  : 

In  the  first  stage  of  approach,  however,  the  critic,  while  all  the 
time  full  of  athletic  force,  must  cunningly  assume  a  passive  aspect, 


298  EDWARD  DOWDEN— MASSON 

and  to  do  so  he  must  put  restraint  upon  his  own  vivacity  and  play 
of  mind.  His  aim  is  now  to  obtain  a  faithful  impression  of  the 
object.  His  second  movement  of  mind  will  be  one  of  recoil  and 
resilience,  whereby  having  received  a  pure  impression  of  the  object, 
he  tries  to  surprise  and  lay  hold  of  the  power  which  produced  that 
impression.  And  these  are  the  two  chief  processes  of  the  critical 
spirit  in  literature. 

Dowden,  though  keenly  alive  to  form,  applied  these  principles 
more  readily  to  the  appraisement  of  an  author's  thought  and 
feeling,  often  with  high  success.  Not  a  commanding  writer, 
he  was  endowed  with  an  unusually  gentle,  catholic,  and 
harmonious  spirit. 

Some  of  these  remarks  apply  to  another  Irish  scholar  and 
critic,  Stopford  Augustus  Brooke  (1832-1916).  He  was  not 
a  professor,  but  a  divine  ;  originally  an  Anglican,  he  joined 
the   Unitarian  community.  He  is,  therefore,  more  of  a 

preacher  than  Dowden.  He  is  also  less  of  a  scholar,  though  in 
his  ample  discourses  on  Shakespeare,  Tennyson,  and  Browning, 
he  covers  much  of  the  same  ground.  His  interest  in  the  ideas 
of  the  poets  and  in  their  '  messages,'  however,  tends  to  disguise 
his  critical  faculty,  which  is,  or  might  have  been,  no  less  distinct 
than  Dowden's.  In  fact  his  definitions  and  descriptions  are 
often  clearer  cut.  Much  as  Brooke  wrote,  his  quality  is  still 
most  apparent  in  his  little  Primer  of  English  Literature  (1876), 
which  was  honourably  reviewed  by  Matthew  Arnold,  and  is 
hardly  to  be  bettered  as  a  piece  of  miniature-work.  Brooke's 
History  of  Early  English  Literature  (1892)  is  also  still  fresh  and 
inspiring  in  spite  of  imperfect  formal  scholarship  and  much 
propensity  to  guesswork. 

A  word  of  honour  is  also  due  to  two  Scottish  professors  of 
literature,  who  balance  the  Irishmen.  These  are  David  Masson 
of  Edinburgh  (1822-1907)  and  William  Minto  of  Aberdeen 
(1846-93).  Masson,  a  picturesque  figure,  was  much  more  of  a 
savant,  biographer,  and  historian  than  a  critic,  as  can  be  seen 
from  his  monographs  on  Chatterton  and  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden,  both  issued  in  1873,  and  above  all  from  hif 
labours  in  honour  of  Milton,  with  whose  name  his  own  must 
ever  be  associated.  His  Life  of  Milton  in  Connexion  with  the 
History  of  his  Own  Time  (1858-80),  in  six  great  volumes,  is  a 
vast  and  unshapely  book ;  Masson  wrote  eagerly  and  awkwardly, 
and  James  Russell  Lowell,  a  critic  much  overrated  in  his  day, 
twanged  off  sundry  cheap  jokes  at  its  expense.  But  the  Life  of 
Milton  remains  and  the  jokes  are  forgotten.  Its  title  expresses 
its  aim,  and  the  aim  is  achieved.     It  is  a  masterly  work  of 


MINTO— FURNIVALL— HUTTON  299 

reference,  in  which  all  possible  information  can  be  easily  found 
and  safely  trusted.  The  same  is  true  of  Masson's  various 
editions  of  the  poet,  and  of  his  editorial  work  on  De  Quincey. 
His  little  book  on  Carlyle  should  be  remembered  too.  The 
other  professor,  Minto,  left  no  such  monument.  A  journalist 
in  earlier  life,  and  latterly  also  a  novelist,  he  was  a  teacher  of 
philosophy  as  well  as  of  letters.  But  despite  these  diversions 
he  left  some  sound,  unambitious,  and  hard-headed  criticism  in 
his  Manual  of  English  Prose  Literature  (1872)  ;  and  still  more, 
in  his  Characteristics  of  English  Poets  from  Chaucer  to  Shirley 
(1874),  where  he  follows,  in  a  more  collegiate  and  orderly 
way,  the  free  method  of  Hazlitt.  Minto's  plain  efficient  style 
is  not  a  dull  one,  and  in  his  short  book  on  Defoe  (1879)  he 
drives  a  clear  track  through  a  thorny  and  almost  impassable 
jungle. 

This  is  not  a  history  of  scholarship  ;  yet  one  representative 
name  may  be  selected  from  the  army  of  skilled  masons  who  laid 
a  surer  foundation  for  the  study  of  English  literature.  Indeed, 
the  incessant  labours  of  the  long-lived,  the  immeasurably  lively 
and  dauntless  Frederick  James  Furnivall x  (1825-1910)  were 
not  merely  those  of  the  mason.  As  a  founder  and  ruling  spirit 
of  the  Early  English  Text  Society,  and  of  societies  for  the 
study  of  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Browning  and  Shelley,  Furnivall 
gave  an  impulse  which  is  hard  to  calculate..  He  made  the 
interpretation  of  many  poets  possible.  Often  he  interpreted 
them  himself,  eagerly,  pugnaciously,  rashly,  teasingly,  but 
never  idly  or  tamely.  His  best  single  composition  is  perhaps 
the  introduction  to  the  so-called  '  Leopold  Shakespeare,' 
published  in  1877,  in  which  he  gives  a  most  humane  reading  of 
the  poet.  Furnivall  is  not  clogged  by  the  mass  of  accessory 
learning  which  he  cites  ;  his  whimsical  taste  for  archaic  diction 
and  spelling  does  no  harm,  for  it  finds  no  followers. 

To  this  chapter  may  be  added  the  name  of  Richard  Holt 
Hutton  2  (1826-97),  best  known  as  the  co-editor  and  arch-critic 
of  the  Spectator  from  1861  onwards,  and  as  the  opponent,  from 
a  very  broad  theological  standpoint,  of  the  scientific  and 
agnostic  creeds,  which  he  strove  judicially  to  understand. 
Hutton's  natural  turn  was  for  philosophy  ;  in  literature,  he 
cared  first  of  all  for  the  ideas,  and  for  the  '  application  of  the 
ideas  to  life,'  and  this  bent  is  seen  in  his  patient  and  serious, 
though  not  very  exhilarating,  judgements  on  the  poets.  His 
pages  on  Shelley,  Tennyson,  and  Browning  have  the  tone  of  the 
courteous  Mentor-journalist,  instructing  the  public  in  undis- 
covered beauties.     One  of  his  more  elaborate  papers,  a  review 


300  HUTTON 

of  Lewes's  Life  of  Goethe,  makes  the  utmost  of  the  familiar 
case  against  the  great  poet's  egoism,  self -absorption,  and  so 
forth,  and  shows  no  little  subtlety  of  attack  ;  it  is  a  most 
characteristic  sample  of  the  moral  gravity  and  idealistic  temper 
which  people  now  call  '  Victorian.'  But  Hutton  was  very  far 
from  being  a  mere  preacher,  though  he  was  sometimes,  as  his 
verdict  on  George  Eliot  (see  Ch.  xxin.)  shows,  disproportion- 
ate in  praise.  He  was  catholic  in  his  likings,  and  also  in  his 
dealings  as  editor.  No  narrow  puritan  would  have  printed,  in 
a  weekly  addressed  to  the  stable  and  '  thoughtful '  classes, 
Swinburne's  Faustine  or  his  review  of  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai. 


CHAPTER   XII 
MISCELLANEOUS  PROSE 


There  remain  for  notice  some  of  the  essayists,  makers  of 
memoirs,  and  travellers,  as  well  as  certain  writers  like  George 
Borrow  and  Samuel  Butler  who  would  have  scorned  to  be 
classified.  Selection  here  becomes  the  harder  for  the  increasing 
mass  of  printed  matter  which  is  heaped  on  the  debateable 
ground  lying  between  literature  and  mere  books.  The  peri- 
odical press  grew  enormously  ;  the  appetite  of  the  public  for 
any  record  of  a  '  life '  or  a  '  journey,'  or  for  a  lay  sermon,  became 
insatiable  ;  circulating  libraries  multiplied,  and  books  were 
cheapened.  The  demand  for  commodities  that  fed  this  desire 
and  were  forgotten  enhanced  the  supply.  The  heap  still  grows, 
and  it  is  a  curious  question  whether  within  fifty  years  any  man 
will  dare  to  sift  and  describe  the  literature  of  our  own  day. 
In  the  present  case  the  attempt,  though  not  made  at  random, 
can  only  be  provisional ;  and  I  would  wish,  whatever  may  be 
left  out,  only  to  include  what  can  still  produce  some  interest 
or  pleasure. 

Among  the  essayists,  it  may  be  proper  to  mention  first 
the  authors  of  that  once  esteemed, but  disappointing  work, 
Guesses  at  Truth,  of  which  the  first  instalment  appeared  in 
1827  :  a  string  of  maxims,  often  swelling  out  into  essays,  on 
matters  literary,  philosophical,  or  theological.  Descriptive 
poetry,  Wordsworth's  Laodamia,  the  minutiae  of  prose  tyle, 
Hegel's  idea  of  history,  the  '  French  paste  '  of  Voltaire's 
epigrams,  are  typical  subjects  of  discourse  ;  and  the  inspira- 
tion, for  good  and  otherwise,  of  Coleridge,  can  often  be  traced. 
But  the  pensee,  or  single  aphorism,  has  not  flourished  well  in 
English,  in  spite  of  Halifax,  and  Swift,  and  the  author  of  Hudi- 
bras,  and  Hazlitt.  The  book  was  at  first  anonymous,  '  by  two 
brothers  ' ;  and  these  were  Augustus  William  Hare  and  Julius 
Charles  Hare  1  (1795-1855)  ;  and  they  have  a  way  of  starting, 
ingeniously  or  solemnly,  in  a  promising  manner,  and  raising 
hopes — et  puis  rien  !     Yet  there  are  gleams  of  delicate  observa- 

301 


302        AUGUSTUS  AND  JULIUS  HARE— HINTON 

tion  ;  and  Julius  Hare  was  a  man  of  some  mark,  who  did 
much  to  introduce  German  thought  and  letters  to  the  English 
public  ;  translating  parts  of  Fouque,  and  also,  in  partnership 
with  Thirlwall,  of  Niebuhr's  History  of  Rome.  Hare  collected 
at  his  Hurstmonceaux  rectory  one  of  the  best  German  libraries 
in  England.  He  became  Archdeacon  of  Lewes,  wrote  much 
controversially,  and  was  recognised  as  a  veteran  founder  of 
the  liberal  movement  in  English  theology.  He  is  a  somewhat 
heavy  and  eccentric  writer,  having  views  of  his  own,  after- 
wards adopted  by  Furnivall  and  others,  about  the  reformation 
of  spelling  ;  forein,  firy,  soverin,  pluckt,  are  examples  of  his 
practice.  His  memoir  of  his  friend  John  Sterling  was  a  pro- 
vocation to  Carlyle  to  write  a  masterpiece  of  biography. 

The  movement  of  English  thought  in  this  period,  said 
Matthew  Arnold  truly,  'is  lay  '  ;  and  while  this  great,  lay, 
central  movement  of  thought  pressed  on  to  its  extremes,  in 
Spencer,  Huxley,  or  Clifford  (extremes  often  lying  far  asunder), 
it  could  not  but  also  touch  many  sincere  and  admirable  spirits, 
reared  in  this  fold  or  that ;  who  are  seen  pressing  on  beyond 
the  bounds  and  fences  of  any  '  free  church,'  yet  still  holding 
hard  to  one  or  two  primary  tenets,  and  trying  to  reconcile 
the  blessings  of  faith  with  those  of  emancipation.  Clough  is 
such  a  figure,  in  poetry  :  in  prose  there  is  no  one  so  gifted  as 
Clough  ;  but  there  are  some  essayists,  middlemen  and  trans- 
mitters of  thought,  who,  though  not  strictly  initiative  minds,  are 
of  more  than  historic  interest,  and  who  can  still  be  read.  One 
of  these,  James  Hinton  (1822-75),  a  surgeon  and  aurist  of  note 
in  his  time,  and  born  in  the  Baptist  community,  is  best  known 
for  the  work,  published  anonymously  in  1866  and  called  The 
Mystery  of  Pain :  a  singular  corrective  in  advance  to  the  sheer 
happiness-worship  which  Spencer,  thirteen  years  later,  was 
to  proclaim  in  The  Data  of  Ethics.  The  painful  doubts  and 
moral  searchings  of  the  hour  are  reflected  in  Hinton's  argu- 
ment, no  less  than  in  Middlemarch  or  Dipsychus ;  and  his  style, 
if  not  that  of  a  rigid  reasoner,  is  both  plain  and  fine  ;  it  suggests 
the  hand  of  the  surgeon  touching  an  open  nerve.  Pain,  always 
an  evil  in  itself,  and  often  an  evil  undeserved  and  unredeemed, 
becomes,  he  says,  less  mysterious  when  viewed  as  an  element 
of  self-sacrifice  ;  which  itself,  though  sometimes  useless,  is 
the  true  path  to  the  higher  satisfaction.  Hinton  works  out 
this  familiar  idea  on  its  own  merits  and  with  little  reliance  on 
any  doctrinal  stay  :  and  it  is  here  that  he  is,  or  was,  original. 

William  Rathbone  Greg  (1809-81),  millowner,  philanthropist, 
essayist,  and  reviewer,  is  a  writei   of  less  delicacy  than  the 


GREG— HELPS  303 

retiring  Hinton,  and  is  easier  to  discover  ;  but  he  has  a  wider 
range  and  sharper  edge.  Greg  was  a  liberal,  who  took  alarm 
early  in  the  day  at  the  onset  of  democracy  and  fulminated 
accordingly,  in  a  Whig-Conservative  tone,  in  defence  of  pro- 
perty and  the  rule  of  the  wise.  His  fair-minded  and  balanced 
eulogy  of  Peel  is  a  good  specimen  of  his  political  writing,  and 
contains  shrewd  touches  worthy  of  Bagehot.  He  is  better 
known  for  his  speculative  works  such  as  The  Creed  of  Christen- 
dom ( 1 8  5 1 )  and  Enigmas  of  Life  ( 1 8  7  2 ) . 1  He  was  an  '  advanced  ' 
thinker,  who  still  held  fast  to  theism  and  a  faith  in  survival, 
but  in  an  odd  provisional  fashion.  He  preferred  to  keep  them  ; 
but  he  thought  they  could  neither  be  proved  nor  disproved  ; 
and  he  did  not  ask  anyone  else  to  keep  them.  On  such  a  base 
he  builds  his  uncertain  faith  in  the  future  of  mankind  He 
is  full  of  the  scientific  optimism  of  the  period,  and  of  the  im- 
provements wrought,  or  to  be  wrought,  in  '  lighting,  locomo- 
tion, and  communication,'  and  in  housing  and  hygiene.  But 
he  is  also  a  pessimist,  who  finds  that  life  is  a  tragedy  in  its 
essence,  and  one  by  no  means  lightened  by  the  prospect  of 
mob-rule.  Sanguine  hours  alternate  with  jeremiads,  and  the 
result  does  not  always  illuminate.  Still  Greg  can  both  write 
and  think.  His  pages  on  the  '  value  of  false  religions  '  (which 
are  vitiated,  yet  also  inspired,  by  the  claim  laid  by  each  of 
them  to  absolute  truth),  and  his  picture  of  a  heaven  which 
does  not  efface  the  earthborn  personality,  have  an  independent 
stamp.  His  want  of  coherence  is  partly  retrieved  by  a  catholic 
and  lofty  temper,  and  he  is  one  of  the  more  interesting  halfway 
minds  of  his  time.  His  form  is  often  good,  his  English,  though 
not  improved  by  a  strain  of  pulpit  rhetoric,  is  better  than  easy, 
being  efficient  and  well- trained. 

II 

Ruskin,  in  one  of  his  whimsical  and  surprising  passages, 
couples  Sir  Arthur  Helps  (1813-75)  with  Plato  and  Carlyle 
as  a  writer  who  has  done  him  much  good  ;  and  speaks,  less 
immoderately,  of  his  '  quiet  and  beautiful  English.'  Helps 
could  in  fact  write  in  a  rather  too  quiet,  but  still  in  a  polished 
and  very  graceful  fashion,  and  is  an  attractive  essayist.  Old 
Victorian  private  libraries,  kept  together  in  public  institutions, 
can  almost  be  dated  by  the  prominence  of  such  writers  on  their 
shelves  ;  and  Helps  is  a  minor  landmark  of  this  kind.  He 
wrote  a  great  deal,  including  a  history  of  The  Spanish  Conquest 
of  America  (1855-61),  and  also  dramas,  biographies,  and  books 


304  HAMERTON 

of  aphorism.  But  he  is  at  his  best  in  his  imaginary  dialogues, 
called  Friends  in  Council  (1847-59),  wherein  the  grave  Milverton 
and  the  lively  Ellesmere,  with  their  lady  friends  mostly  silent 
around  them,  exchange  thoughtful  remarks  on  war,  govern- 
ment, slavery,  style,  and  human  nature.  Helps  was  an  eminent 
civil  servant,  and  there  is  some  official  flatness  and  propriety 
about  his  thinking,  but  he  appealed  to  his  cultivated,  sedate, 
reflective  public.  His  Companions  of  my  Solitude  (1851) 
contains  a  discussion,  frank  and  open  for  its  time,  on  the  pro- 
blem raised  by  '  the  great  sin  of  great  cities.' 

Much  of  this  mid- Victorian  discoursing  wears  but  a  cold 
greyish  hue  to-day  ;  estimable  and  well-balanced,  it  shows 
little  free  play  of  mind,  and  its  moderate,  edifying  tone  still 
provokes  some  protest  from  the  old  Adam  within  us.  One  of 
its  best  practitioners,  who  says  what  he  has  to  say  with  pointed 
neatness  and  no  pretence,  is  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton  (1834-94), 
a  person  of  repute  and  expert  judgement  as  a  critic  of  painting 
and  etching,  and  the  conductor  of  sundry  art  journals.  Of  his 
general  essays,  the  best-known  bundles  are  The  Intellectual 
Life  (1873),  and  Human  Intercourse  (1884),  the  latter  being 
dedicated  to  Emerson.  Both  works  are  well  informed,  well 
worded,  neither  commonplace  nor  yet  distinguished  ;  Human 
Intercourse  is  the  fresher  of  the  two.  The  headings  of  the 
chapters  tell  us  a  good  deal:  'of  passionate  love,'  which  is 
discussed  dispassionately  and  earnestly  ;  on  '  companionship  in 
marriage,'  illustrated  by  the  leading  cases  of  Goethe,  Shelley, 
Byron,  John  Stuart  Mill,  and  George  Eliot ;  and  on  '  a  remark- 
able English  peculiarity,'  namely  that  of  observing  a  '  freezing 
silence  '  during  foreign  travel.  On  such  ground  Hamerton 
is  at  his  best  ;  he  lived  much  abroad,  and  his  French  and 
English,  a  Comparison  (1889)  is  not  only  an  alert  observant 
record  of  manners,  but  a  real  and  penetrating  study  of  national 
differences.  Some  of  the  chapters,  like  those  on  '  thrift,' 
'  patriotism,'  or  '  purity,'  have  an  almost  Baconian  conciseness 
and  impartiality,  if  they  also  show  the  Baconian  habit  of 
using  a  note-book,  packed  with  '  antitheta,'  or  the  pros  and 
cons  of  the  topic  in  hand.  Hamerton's  criticism  is  often 
excellent.  Matthew  Arnold,  who  must  have  known  French 
novels  better  than  he  knew  French  life,  and  who  sometimes 
talked  like  any  ignorant  British  gentleman,  charged  the 
French  nation  with  the  worship  of  '  the  great  goddess  Lubricity,' 
a  myth  disposed  of  by  Hamerton's  quiet  recital  of  the  social 
facts.  Yet  such  is  the  unfairness  of  literature,  that  the  phrase 
has  stuck  and  the  correction  is  forgotten.     Hamerton  writes 


BR.  JOHN  BROWN  305 

for  truth,  not  for  effect,  with  a  mild  Gallic  elegance,  and 
manages  to  be  entertaining.  But  now  for  a  writer  with  more 
blood  in  him  than  all  of  these. 

Brevity  is  the  soul  of  pathos,  as  well  as  of  wit  ;  that  is  one 
reason  why  real  pathos,  which  keeps  its  power  through  all 
changes  of  taste  and  time,  is  rare.  Dickens  commands  it,  but 
it  has  to  be  painfully  sifted  out  from  his  mass  of  false  pathos. 
Thackeray  commands  it,  though  he  deadens  the  effect  by 
bearing  too  hard  and  going  on  too  long  ;  he  sometimes  leaves 
us  dead  sick  of  pathos.  The  great  poets  concentrate  their 
expression  of  it  into  some  phrase  that  has  all  the  force  and 
weight  of  the  drama  behind  it  ;  as  in  the  epitaphs  on  Cordelia 
and  Desdemona  ('  What  wife  ?  I  have  no  wife  ').  In  a  lyric  or 
short  tale  there  is  no  such  weight  behind  ;  but  there  should 
also  be  no  time  for  any  risk  of  overstrain  and  self-defeat. 
These  remarks  will  not,  I  hope,  be  thought  beyond  the  occasion  ; 
for  Dr.  John  Brown's  Rab  and  his  Friends  is  a  flawless  example 
of  pathos  in  a  brief  compass.  The  hospital  scene  has  no  equal 
in  its  kind  ;  the  strength  of  the  subject  forbids  any  sentimental- 
ism  ;  the  warmth  and  depth  of  the  Scottish  heart,  here  uttered 
without  reserve,  could  not  find  surer  words  ;  while  the  overture 
of  the  dog-fight,  and  the  constant  feeling  for  the  dog's  point  of 
view,  '  balance,'  as  painters  used  to  say,  '  the  composition.' 
Our  Dogs,  though  not  tragic,  is  again  excellent  portraiture. 
Marjorie  Fleming  equally  full  of  humorous  and  tender  good 
sense,  consists  chiefly  of  the  letters  of  the  wonderful  child  ;  and 
it  has  also  inspired  the  poet's  vision  of 

Some  happier  island  in  the  Elysian  sea 
Where  Rab  may  lick  the  hand  of  Marjorie. 

The  writings  of  Dr.  John  Brown  *  of  Edinburgh  (1810-82) 
are  nearly  all  covered  in  the  three  volumes  or  series  of  Horce 
Subsecivaz  ('  odd  hours,'  1858-61).  One  group,  nominally  given 
up  to  professional  subjects,  is  headed,  from  its  opening  article, 
Locke  and  Sydenham  ;  but  Brown  manages  to  introduce  a 
eulogy  of  Henry  Vaughan,  who  was  a  medical  man  as  well  as  a 
poet  ;  and,  further,  a  wonderful  Elia-like  page  descriptive  of 
the  Irish  jnocca-gohlin,  whom  Crofton  Croker,  in  his  Fairy 
Legends,  had  delineated.  The  memorial  notice  of  Brown's 
father  (Letter  to  John  Cairns,  D.D.),  and  the  paper  upon  Thomas 
Chalmers,  take  us  again  deep  into  Scottish  life.  Who  can  forget 
the  picture  of  the  brutal  drover  weeping,  and  the  flock  drawn 
from  their  seats  and  '  converging  '  on  the  great  preacher  ? 
Brown's  perfervidum  ingenium  does  not  mar  his  grace  and 
VOL.   I.  U 


306  DR.  JOHN  BROWN— JEFFERIES 

economy  in  the  use  of  language.  There  are  also  his  elegiac 
pages  on  Arthur  Hallam  and  Thackeray.  The  most  cheerful 
of  the  Horce,  entitled  Mystifications,  relates  the  performance 
of  Miss  Graham  Stirling,  a  born  impersonator,  who  dressed 
herself  out  as  a  witty  eccentric  lady  of  the  old  school,  and 
deceived,  after  fair  warning  given,  the  Lord  Advocate,  Francis 
Jeffrey.  John  Brown  also  wrote  with  taste  and  relish  on 
Leech,  Raeburn,  and  other  artists.  In  his  letters  there  are 
many  flashes  of  his  peculiar  felicity  ;  he  speaks  of  a  '  brilliant 
and  procacious  lecture  '  of  Matthew  Arnold's  ;  remarks  that 
George  Eliot  has  '  fully  as  much  talent  as  genius  ' — a  left- 
handed  stroke  ;   and  says  of  his  friend  Ruskin, 

I  am  sure  he  has  wings  under  his  flannel  jacket ;  he  is  not  a 
man,  but  a  stray  angel,  who  had  singed  his  wings  a  little  and  tumbled 
into  our  sphere.  He  has  all  the  arrogance,  insight,  unreasonable- 
ness, and  spiritual  '  sheen  '  of  a  celestial. 

A  note  may  here  be  made  on  Richard  Jefferies  (1848-87), 
though  the  greater  part  of  his  work  was  not  published  till  after 
1880.  He  had  already  shown  his  quality  in  stray  articles  ;  but 
the  first  book  in  which  it  is  fairly  discovered  is  The  Gamekeeper 
at  Home  (1878).  The  son  of  a  farmer,  Jefferies  was  born  on 
the  Wiltshire  side  of  Swindon,  and  grew  up  among  the  copsed 
downs,  the  fat  valleys,  and  the  roiling  woodland  of  that  noble 
countryside.  He  was  a  born  watcher,  a  man  of  trained  and 
intensified  senses  and  of  patiently  accurate  habit  ;  he  had 
besides  a  strong  poetic  sense,  and  a  vein  of  mystical  rumination 
which  is  never  suffered  to  falsify  his  report.  His  faculty  of 
minute  description  is  seen  in  such  works  as  Wild  Life  in  a 
Southern  County  (1879)  and  The  Life  of  the  Fields  (1884).  His 
more  usual  style  is  plodding  and  slightly  literal,  at  any  rate 
circumstantial ;  but  such  a  manner  has  its  own  charm.  Not 
only  beasts  and  birds,  fish  and  insects  and  spiders,  but  rustic 
mankind  as  well,  are  part  of  his  scene.  In  Hodge  and  his 
Master  (1880)  and  elsewhere  he  describes  the  country  labourer, 
and  the  men  of  his  own  class,  perhaps  more  trrly,  because  more 
from  within,  than  any  novelist.  In  other  papers  the  treatment 
is  freer  ;  Jefferies  has  an  eye  for  the  human  comedy,  and 
especially  for  the  beauties  and  graces  of  the  human  body  ;  this 
is  seen  in  contributions  like  The  Bathing  Season,  or  Sunny 
Brighton,  or  Beauty  in  the  Country  ;  all  of  which  are  collected 
in  the  volume  entitled  The  Open  Air.  His  most  remarkable 
book  is  his  autobiography,  The  Story  of  My  Heart  (1883), 
which  is  a  record,  touched  with  a  real  but  not  miserable  melan- 
choly, of  dream  and  aspiration  rather  than  of  external  fact. 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  307 


III 


Samuel  Butler,1  born  in  1835,  died  in  1902  ;  but  one  of  his 
fancies  was  not  to  believe  in  death,  or  in  survival  either,  in  their 
ordinary  senses.  A  man's  identity  and  personality  go  on,  or 
go  out,  according  as  he  is  remembered  or  forgotten,  or  rather 
according  as  his  mental  impulses  continue  in  others  or  fade 
away.  This  sort  of  continuance,  however,  Butler  does  not 
phrase  in  moral  terms,  like  the  authoress  of  the  lines  about 
the  '  choir  invisible,'  but  in  intellectual  terms  ;  and  he  mused 
a  good  deal  about  his  posthumous  reputation,  wishing  however 
that  it  might  be  in  the  hands  not  of  the  '  cultured  critics,' 
whom  he  would  have  hated,  but  of  '  nice  people.'  From  his 
own  point  of  view,  he  was  not  much  alive  in  his  lifetime,  save 
in  a  dubious  fashion  ;  but  certainly,  after  his  disappearance, 
he  is  having  his  share  of  life.  In  the  same  strain  he  remarks 
of  Shakespeare  : 

Whilst  he  was  alive,  very  few  people  understood  his  greatness  ; 
whereas  now  after  some  300  years  he  is  deemed  the  greatest  poet 
that  the  world  has  ever  seen. — Can  he  be  said  to  have  been  truly 
born  till  many  a  long  year  after  he  had  been  reputed  to  be  truly 
dead  ?  Whilst  he  was  in  the  flesh,  was  he  more  than  a  mere 
embryo,  growing  towards  birth  in  that  life  of  the  world  to  come 
in  which  he  now  shines  so  gloriously  ? 

Butler,  born  in  a  parsonage,  went  to  Shrewsbury  and  Cam- 
bridge ;  was  meant  for  the  Church,  but  conceived  doubts  and 
escaped  that  calling  ;  kept  sheep  with  success  in  New  Zealand, 
and  there  began  to  write  ;  came  to  London,  commenced  painter, 
made  some  way  in  the  art,  and  resumed  writing,  producing 
in  1872  Er&whon,  or  Over  the  Range  ;  and  also,  about  the  same 
time,  two  works,  ironically  couched,  in  disproof  of  the  Resur- 
rection. The  puzzling  Erewhon  was  read  rather  than  com- 
prehended. Indeed  Butler  seems  hardly  to  know  himself 
whether  his  Utopian  society  is  a  satiric  parody,  like  Brob- 
dingnag,  of  our  own,  or  an  ideal  polity,  like  that  of  the 
Houyhnhnms,  held  up  for  our  shame  and  instruction.  The 
book  was  the  piecework  of  many  years,  and  he  revised  it  more 
than  once  ;  each  of  its  main  ideas  is  fairly  distinct,  but  they 
do  not  dovetail  well  together.  His  most  striking  point,  reflect- 
ing th^  new  speculations  as  to  the  influence  of  environment,  is 
well  known.     The  reception  given  by  society  to  vice  or  crime, 


308  SAMUEL  BUTLER 

and  that  given  to  illness  or  misfortune,  are  interchanged.  A 
youth  is  accused  and  found  guilty  of  pulmonary  consumption, 
and  severely  sentenced.  But  the  murderer,  embezzler,  or 
bad-tempered  person,  is  openly  pitied,  but  not  shamed ;  he  is 
painfully  set  right  by  a  mind-doctor,  or  '  straightener.'  The 
real  virtues  are  health,  beauty,  and  efficiency  ;  the  Erewhonians 
are  something  like  what  we  dream  the  best  Greeks  to  have 
been  or  wished  to  be.  But  they  are  not  perfect.  They  still 
pay  homage  to  an  effete,  inoperative  religion.  And  they  pay 
yet  more  homage  to  the  goddess  Ydgrun,  Grundy,  or  conven- 
tion ;  who,  none  the  less,  has  a  good  deal  to  say  for  herself. 
There  are  many  other  things  in  Ereiuhon  (Nowhere)  ;  but  the 
excellence  of  its  descriptions  of  scenery  and  mountaineering  is 
not  so  often  noticed.  The  supposed  explorer  is  one  of  Defoe's 
or  Swift's  plain  men,  who  takes  no  thought  of  style,  and  whose 
own  mind  is  furnished  barely  and  inexpensively. 

From  1877  onwards  Butler  struck  into  scientific  contro- 
versy, and,  as  an  amateur  of  genius,  challenged  some  of  the 
ruling  ideas  of  Darwin  and  Wallace.  He  produced  Life  and 
Habit  (1877),  Unconscious  Memory  (1880),  Luck?  or  Cunning? 
(1886),  and  other  works.  'Cunning,'  he  says,  is  the  element 
of  purposive  effort,  which  must  needs  reside  in  the  plants  and 
animals  that  survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  The  doc- 
trine of  merely  accidental  happy  variations  cannot  account 
for  the  facts.  The  modern  biologist *  acknowledges  that 
Butler's  reasonings  and  intuitions  were  really  to  the  purpose 
during  a  stage,  now  past  and  gone,  of  the  great  controversy. 
They  are  also  bound  up  with  other  ideas  which  affected  his 
whole  view  of  life.  Sometimes  he  was  tempted  to  see  purpose, 
or  the  rudiment  of  mind,  even  in  the  inorganic  world,  and  to 
merge  mind  and  matter  in  one.  He  always  asserted  a  true 
continuance  of  personal  identity  as  between  the  successive 
generations  of  living  things.  Thus  bodily  death  becomes  in- 
significant, and  all  the  '  values  '  of  life  itself  are  changed.  Such 
thoughts  are  to  be  found,  presented  in  facet  after  facet,  in 
Butler's  essays,  notes,  and  journals  of  travel. 

In  1881  he  published  the  most  agreeable  of  his  books  and 
the  freest  in  treatment,  Alps  and  Sanctuaries  of  Piedmont 
and  the  Canton  Ticino.  It  is  charged  with  Butler's  intense 
feeling  for  art  and  for  natural  beauty,  and  is  adorned  by  his 
own  sketches.  It  also  contains  the  text  of  the  ballad  of  Wednes- 
bury  Cocking,  which  he  recited  with  much  success,  in  order  to 
console  the  youth  whom  he  found  '  in  a  flood  of  tears  over  the 
death  of  his  grandmother,'  aged  ninety-three  :    an  incident 


SAMUEL  BUTLER  309 

that  we  may  imagine  happening  to  Borrow.  A  sequel  was 
Ex  Voto,  an  account  of  the  artistic  remains  at  Varallo,  in  the 
same  district.  In  London  Butler  settled  down  to  literature 
and  music.  He  adored  Handel  and  thought  of  him  every  day 
of  his  life  ;  and  composed  music  of  his  own.  He  wrote  in- 
genious cranky  works,  one  to  prove  that  a  woman  wrote  the 
Odyssey,  another  to  prove  that  Shakespeare  addressed  his 
Sonnets  to  a  plebeian.  In  1901  came  Erewhon  Revisited,  a  well- 
arranged  and  brilliant  satire,  describing  the  birth  of  an  official 
religion  out  of  a  purely  imaginary  Resurrection.  But  the  book 
has  not  the  fresh  spontaneity  of  Erewhon  ;  and  there  is  nothing 
in  it  like  the  chapter,  which  reminds  us  more  of  Plato  than  of 
Swift,  on  '  the  world  of  the  unborn.'  Here  there  are  foolish 
and  restless  souls  who  forgo  their  birthright  immortality  and  pine 
for  our  world  of  life  and  death.  Despite  all  warning,  they 
drink  a  Lethe  potion,  and  they  are  then  '  allotted  by  chance, 
and  without  appeal,  to  two  people  whom  it  is  their  business 
to  find  and  pester  until  they  adopt  them.'  The  idea  accords 
with  that  merciless  presentment  of  the  parental  relation  which 
rules  in  Butler's  posthumously  published  novel,  The  Way  of 
All  Flesh,  which  was  begun  about  the  same  date  as  the  appear- 
ance of  Erewhon. 

Butler  starts  from  a  revolt  against  every  sort  of  stuffy  con- 
vention (as  he  judges  it  to  be)  in  science,  religion,  and  conduct. 
His  method  is  paradox  ;  but  he  ends,  after  all,  in  a  creed  of 
hard  common  sense,  illumined  by  a  few  scientific  ideas.  He 
does  not  end  in  romantic  rebellion,  or  in  the  anarchical  temper. 
He  believes  in  health  of  mind  and  body,  in  honest  money  and 
in  the  satisfaction  it  brings,  and  in  an  unexacting  standard  of 
virtue  ;  he  will  tolerate  many  faults  in  the  flesh  and  temper, 
so  the  mind  remain  uncorrupted.  He  keeps  a  kind  of  respect 
for  institutions.  Ernest  Pontifex,  in  his  novel,  breaks  away 
from  his  dreadful  parent,  Theobald,  the  embodiment  of  com- 
placent and  cruel  convention  ;  breaks  with  the  Church,  and 
with  the  social  caste  and  code  ;  does  time  for  an  assault  ;  marries 
a  drunken  maidservant,  who  luckily  proves  to  have  a  husband 
already  ;  turns  tailor  and  earns  his  bread  ;  and  comes  into  a 
fortune  by  a  windfall.  The  book  has  been  described  as  '  im- 
perishably  graven  out  of  the  flint  of  life,'  and  certainly  every 
line  has  the  print  of  experience.  Still,  it  is  a  pamphlet  in 
novel  shape,  ex  parte  ;  it  gives  Butler's  own  case  against  his 
early  environment  with  absolute  sincerity  and  expressiveness. 
Butler,  in  fact,  from  the  first  writes  with  a  chisel.  His 
unit,  or  ideal  of  style,  is  the  maxim,  or  pensee,  consisting  of  a 


310        SAMUEL  BUTLER— HAYDON 

few  syllables.  He  is  sometimes  roguish,  sometimes  just  whim- 
sical, sometimes  defiant,  always  mordant,  always  short : 

'  To  live  is  like  to  love — all  reason  is  against  it,  and  all  healthy 
instinct  for  it.' — '  Behold  and  see  if  there  be  any  happiness  like  unto 
the  happiness  of  the  devils  when  they  found  themselves  cast  out  of 
Mary  Magdalene.' — '  The  fight  between  them  [theist  and  atheist] 
is  whether  God  shall  be  called  God  or  shall  have  some  other  name.' — 
'  What  a  pity  it  is  that  Christian  never  met  Mr.  Common-Sense  with 
his  daughter,  Good-Humour,  and  her  affianced  husband,  Mr.  Hate- 
Cant.' 

Butler  joins  his  mots  together  carefully,  and  his  style  is  con- 
tinuous and  good;  but  it  is  bare  and  blunt,  and  its  atomic 
origin  remains  visible.  He  is,  and  tries  to  be,  at  the  opposite 
pole  to  the  flowing  and  decorative  writers.  Some  one,  before 
now,  must  have  inquired  into  his  likenesses  to  his  namesake 
of  Hudibras  fame,  another  aphorist,  another  critic  of  things 
accepted,  and  another  strange  honest  man,  another  philosophe 
judging  philosophers,  another  evangelist  of  common  sense. 

IV 

Some  more  formal  '  Lives  '  may  now  be  named,  exhibiting 
very  different  types  of  humanity.  The  remarkable  memoirs 
of  the  painter,  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon  (1786-1846),  were 
published  in  1853  by  Tom  Taylor,  and  consist  of  an  autobio- 
graphy, which  goes  down  to  the  year  1820,  and  of  diaries  and 
correspondence  which  Taylor  arranged  and  condensed.  The 
earlier  part  of  the  story  belongs  to  the  age  of  romance.  Haydon 
was  the  friend  of  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Lamb,  and  Hazlitt ;  and 
in  aspiration,  if  not  in  accomplishment,  he  was  one  of  them  ; 
he  has  a  breath  of  their  spirit,  and  his  admiration  for  them  is 
clear-sighted.  His  very  failings  remind  us  of  Hazlitt 's  :  though 
his  headlong  antipathies  and  suspicions,  his  quarrel  with  the 
world  at  large  and  the  Royal  Academy  in  especial,  his  streak 
of  paranoia,  or  belief  in  a  general  conspiracy  against  him,  are 
unhappily  not  balanced  by  the  masculine  hardness  of  head 
which  carried  Hazlitt  through  so  many  vagaries.  Haydon  has 
also  something  in  him  of  Keats  ;  he  has  the  same  fundamental 
ardour  for  truth  and  beauty,  though  not  the  same  power  of 
expression.  His  long,  tragical-grotesque  struggle  with  the 
public,  with  debt,  and  with  himself  ended  in  suicide.  He  seems 
to  have  known  that  he  was  not  quite  sane,  and  his  egoism 
deprived  him  of  a  clear  view  of  himself.  But  Hay  don's  passion 
for  his  art  was  fierce,  his  labour  and  self-criticism  were  unre- 


HAYDON— MITCHEL  311 

mitting.  His  many  observations  on  men  and  manners  show 
his  keen  eye  for  comedy  : 

In  our  meetings  Hazlitt's  croakings,  Leigh  Hunt's  wit,  and 
Lamb's  quaint  incomprehensibilities  made  up  rare  scenes.  Lamb 
stuttered  his  quaintness  in  snatches,  like  the  Fool  in  Lear,  and 
with  equal  beauty ;  and  Wilkie  would  chime  in  with  his  '  Dear, 
dear'  [1813]. 

Haydon,  unlike  most  painters,  often  finds  the  only  right 
words  for  his  visual  impressions  : 

The  Chancellor  [Brougham]  sat  to-day.  His  eye  is  as  fine  as 
any  eye  I  ever  saw.  It  is  like  a  lion's  watching  for  prey.  It  is  a 
clear  grey,  the  light  vibrating  at  the  bottom  of  the  iris,  and  the 
cornea  shining,  silvery,  and  tense  [1833].  .  .  .  [O'Connell]  has  an 
eye  like  a  weasel.  Light  seemed  hanging  at  the  bottom,  and  he 
looked  out  with  a  searching  ken,  like  Brougham,  something,  but 
not  with  his  depth  of  insight  [1834]. 

The  latter  years  of  the  memoir,  though  full  of  painful  sallies 
of  disappointment,  self-reproach  and  invective,  are  not  less 
interesting.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  is  much  in  evidence  ;  his 
sittings  to  Haydon,  his  stories,  and  his  replies  to  the  painter's 
importunate  letters,  are  all  memorable.  The  wizened  figure 
of  Wilkie  also  flits  in  and  out.  Haydon,  in  1845,  met  the  old 
Mrs.  Gwatkin,  with  '  great  remains  of  regular  beauty,'  who 
had  known  Reynolds,  Johnson,  and  Burke  :   she  told  how 

Garrick  sat  on  Goldsmith's  knee  ;  a  table-cloth  was  pinned 
under  Garrick' s  chin,  and  »>rought  behind  Goldsmith,  hiding  both 
their  figures.  Garrick  then  spoke,  in  his-  finest  style,  Hamlet  s 
speech  to  his  father's  ghost.  Goldsmith  put  out  his  hands  on  each 
side  of  the  cloth,  and  made  burlesque  action,  tapping  his  heart,  and 
putting  his  hand  to  Garrick's  head  and  nose,  all  at  the  wrong  time. 

Haydon  s  notes  are  a  storehouse  of  such  things,  an  unsort- 
able  medley  of  anecdote,  art,  technicality,  devotion,  despair, 
vanity,  and  shrewdness. 

The  best  prose  writer  of  Young  Ireland,  John  Mitchel 
(1815-75),  has  left  one  of  the  most  vivid  of  diaries  in  his  Jail 
Journal,  or  Five  Years  in  British  Prisons.  A  solicitor  with  a 
scholarly  training,  Mitchel  was  drawn  into  the  cause  by  Thomas 
Davis,  wrote  for  the  Nation,  and  in  1848  began  to  serve  his 
sentence  of  fourteen  years'  transportation  for  treason-felony. 
He  was  taken  to  the  Bermudas,  and  thence  to  Van  Diemen's 
Land,  whence  he  got  off  to  America.  Much  of  the  Journal  is  a 
pungent  tirade,  burning  with  hatred  of  England  ('  the  Cartha- 


312  MITCHEL— HARRIET  MARTINEAU 

ginians  ')  and  above  all  of  Whiggery  ;  but  Mitchel  has  not  the 
political  sense  and  thinking  of  writers  like  Gavan  Duffy.  Very 
different  are  his  descriptions  and  conversations,  and  the  story 
of  his  sufferings  and  escape.  They  have  something  of  the 
precision  and  colour  of  Carlyle,  as  well  as  of  his  actual  manner  ; 
we  are  always  coming,  in  our  survey,  upon  Carlyle  !  and  the 
discipleship  is  all  the  stranger  in  this  passionate  and  extreme 
man  of  genius,  who  said,  truly  enough,  that  '  Carlyle  cannot 
write  rationally  about  Ireland.'  The  waterless  Bermuda  brings 
to  Mitchel's  lips  a  piece  of  Milton,  and  also  the  ditty,  with  its 
burden  of  Ullagone  dhu,  oh  !  on  the  '  misty  vales  '  and  the 
'  fair  hills  of  holy  Ireland.'  He  listens  to  the  floggings  of  the 
drunken  obscene  convicts  who  looked  black  on  him  for  receiv- 
ing treatment  superior  to  theirs.  He  talks  with  the  railway 
swindler  who  had  looted  a  fortune  to  spend  at  Pernambuco  ; 
he  paints  the  Tasmanian  scenery,  and  tells  of  the  breathless 
and  almost  baffled  plot  for  his  release.  Proudly  playing  the 
game,  Mitchel  informs  the  dull  magistrate  that  he  resigns  his 
parole  ;  then  challenges  arrest,  and  rides  off  openly  amid 
official  stupefaction  and  the  hue  and  cry.  Mitchel  also  wrote 
The  Last  Conquest  of  Ireland  (Perhaps)  (1860),  which  relates, 
with  equal  wrath  but  fewer  flourishes,  the  events  of  1848-9. 
The  eulogy  of  Davis,  and  the  denunciation  of  O'Connell  in  his 
later  phase,  the  account  of  the  Nation  and  of  United  Ireland, 
bring  the  story  up  to  and  beyond  the  beginning  of  the  Jail 
Journal.  The  pamphlet  called  The  Crusade  of  the  Period  is 
Mitchel's  well  founded,  though  not  well  managed,  attack  on 
Froude  for  his  English  in  Ireland,  the  libel  on  which  Lecky 
was  to  deliver  the  verdict. 

The  multifarious  Harriet  Martineau  (1802-76),  sister  of 
James  Martineau,  wrote  for  the  most  part  ephemerally  ;  her 
histories,  novels,  books  of  travel,  and  speculative  writings  are 
no  more,  despite  their  facility,  lucidity,  and  energy  ;  and  Miss 
Martineau,  to  save  the  critics  trouble,  made  her  own  epitaph  as  a 
woman  of  letters,  in  words  that  are  duly  brought  up  against  her  : 

With  small  imaginative  and  suggestive  powers,  and  therefore 
nothing  approaching  to  genius,  she  could  see  clearly  what  she  did 
see,  and  give  a  clear  expression  to  what  she  had  to  say.  In  short, 
she  could  popularise  while  she  could  neither  discover  nor  invent. 

This  self -judgement  is  in  one  respect  too  modest.  Miss  Mar- 
tineau did  popularise,  but  in  a  very  skilful  and  pleasing 
way.  Her  Illustrations  of  Political  Economy  (1832),  of  Taxation 
( 1 834),  and  of  the  Poor  Laws  are  designed  either  to  expound 


HARRIET  MARTINEAU  313 

the  Ricardian  views,1  then  in  the  height  of  their  vogue,  con- 
cerning capital,  wealth,  and  distribution,  or  to  attack  slavery 
and  other  abuses  ;  all  by  means  of  little  tales,  which  are 
elementary  and  even  infantine  in  cast  but  neatly  told.  Miss 
Martineau  lived  to  abandon  the  orthodox  economic  faith  in 
favour  of  a  more  generous  one.  Her  Feats  on  the  Fiord  and 
similar  books  have  the  deftness,  without  the  dose  of  argu- 
ment, and  are  well  designed  for  her  audience  of  children.  Her 
History  of  the  Thirty  Years'  Peace,  1816-18J/.6,  is  journalism, 
but  it  is  very  lively  journalism,  and  introduces  allusions  to 
minor  events  and  persons  (including  criminals),  which  would  be 
welcome  in  many  a  more  learned  and  ponderous  chronicle.  Her 
philosophical  works,  which  show  her  passage  from  the  Unitarian 
fold  to  a  purely  agnostic  or  atheistic  position  (announced  most 
intrepidly  and  firmly  held)  are  not  original,  though  they  throw 
light  on  her  character  ;  but  her  digest  (1853)  of  the  Philosophic 
Positive  left  its  mark  on  English  opinion,  and  held  its  ground 
awhile  as  an  exposition  of  Comte.  Her  novel,  Deerkrook  (1839), 
once  popular,  but  now  not  very  digestible,  is  an  early  attempt 
to  describe  bourgeois  life  with  unromantic  fidelity.  But  Miss 
Martineau  left  at  least  one  work,  her  Autobiography  (1877), 
which  is  still  full  of  interest,  instruction,  and  oddity.  It  relates 
her  precise  and  vivid  memories  of  a  repressed  childhood  ;  her 
launch,  about  1830,  on  literature  for  a  livelihood,  and  the 
history  of  her  writings  ;  her  illnesses  and  retirements  from 
society,  during  which  her  religious  views  matured  ;  the  final 
hardening  of  these  opinions,  and  her  stoical  acceptance  of  death 
as  the  end  of  all ;  and,  in  particular,  her  acquaintance  with, 
and  her  judgements  concerning,  an  immense  number  of  con- 
temporary persons.  She  knew  her  London  well  in  the  Thirties, 
and  has  left  her  comments  on  Carlyle  and  Coleridge,  on  Jeffrey 
and  Sydney  Smith,  and  Bulwer  and  Monckton  Milnes,  and  on 
scores  of  others.  She  always  read  widely,  and  has  her  views 
of  Margaret  Fuller,  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  and  of  Macaulay. 
Literal,  rigorous,  and  honest,  she  often  has  a  keen  eye  for 
character  ;  and  though  little  given  to  mere  admiration,  she  is 
not  small  or  ungenerous.  Room  may  well  be  found  for  her 
observations  on  Carlyle  : 

His  excess  of  sympathy  has  been,  I  believe,  the  master-pain  of 
his  life.  He  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  it  and  with  its  bitter- 
ness, seeing  that  human  life  is  full  of  pain  to  those  that  look  out  for 
it ;  and  the  savageness  which  has  come  to  be  the  main  character- 
istic of  this  singular  man  is,  in  my  opinion,  a  mere  expression  of  his 
intolerable  sympathy  with  the  suffering. 


314  FORSTER— GREVILLE 

Miss  Martineau  herself,  being  much  more  of  a  woman  than  she 
would  have  us  believe,  has  abundant  '  sympathy  with  the 
suffering  '  ;  but  her  special  mark,  no  doubt,  is  a  high  hard 
intellectual  courage  which  in  her  day  was  rarely  possible  to 
women.  '  My  business  in  life,'  she  says,  '  has  been  to  think  and 
learn,  and  to  speak  out  with  absolute  freedom  what  I  have 
thought  and  learned.' 

Many  of  the  biographers  of  this  period  have  been  touched 
upon  already  :  Carlyle  and  Froude,  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  and 
Lewes,  and  Bain  and  Masson  ;  and  out  of  the  rest  one  name 
may  be  chosen.  Official  and  competent  records  like  Sir 
Theodore  Martin's  Life  of  the  Prince  Consort  (1875-80)  are 
chiefly  a  quarry  for  the  historian  ;  the  legal  biographies  like 
Lord  Campbell's  Lives  of  the  Lord  Chancellors  and  Lord  Cock- 
burn's  Memorials  of  his  Time  are  chiefly,  despite  their  profes- 
sional wit  or  acrimony,  for  professional  readers  ;  but  the 
labours  of  John  Forster  (1812-76)  are  more  to  our  purpose. 
Forster  was  a  most  capable  and  independent  journalist,  editor, 
and  writer  ;  not  elegant,  not  inspired,  but  energetic,  careful, 
and  outspoken.  His  Life  and  Adventures  (enlarged  as  The 
Life  and  Times)  of  Oliver  Goldsmith  (1848,  1854)  is  a  humane  and 
sympathetic  biography,  and  became  a  classic  in  its  own  kind  ; 
the  Life  of  Landor,  though  valuable,  is  heavier  ;  but  the  Life 
of  Dickens  (1872-4)  cannot  be  superseded.  There  may  be  rather 
too  much  in  it  about  Forster  ;  but  the  broader  lines  of  a  char- 
acter which  it  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate  or  distort  are  faith- 
fully drawn,  and  are  in  harmony  with  the  story  told  by  Dickens's 
letters.  Forster,  though  a  blunt  man,  was  full  of  discerning 
affection  ;  he  was  charged  with  being  too  candid  ;  but  Dickens 
belongs  to  the  world,  and  moreover  comes  out  well  under  the 
test.  No  one  can  ever  know  so  much  about  him  as  Forster 
knew.  The  same  style  and  spirit  are  found  in  Forster's  bio- 
graphy of  Swift,  and  in  his  monographs  on  Sir  John  Eliot  and 
other  seventeenth  -  century  subjects  ;  though  these  are  less 
definitive,  considered  as  authorities. 

The  period  is  rich  in  political  memoirs  which  are  the  quarry 
of  the  investigator  ;  but  few  of  them  can  be  classed  as  literature 
(not  the  CroJcer  Papers,  still  less  the  Creevey  Papers)  for  the 
purpose  of  this  review.  The  journals  of  Charles  Cavendish 
Fulke  Greville  ( 1794-1865),  who  in  boyhood  was  a  page  to  George 
the  Third,  and  who  was  Clerk  of  the  Council  from  1821  onwards, 
for  more  than  a  whole  generation,  are  of  another  class.  His 
diary  opens  with  the  reign  of  George  the  Fourth,  and  continues 
till  I860;    and  it  appeared,  under  the  auspices  of  his  friend, 


TRAVELLERS:  BURTON  315 

Henry  Reeve,  in  three  instalments  (1874-87).  Greville's  birth 
and  official  position  gave  him  a  front  seat  for  the  political  drama, 
or  rather  a  post  of  vantage  for  the  play  behind  the  scenes  ;  and 
he  is  its  faithful,  acute,  and  sardonic  recorder.  He  thinks 
very  little  of  himself,  and  says  that  his  intellect  is  to  Macaulay's 
as  a  hurdy-gurdy  is  to  a  great  organ  ;  but  his  portraiture  of 
Macaulay  is  sober  and  free  from  antithesis,  and  has  a  quality  of 
finesse  which  Macaulay  himself  lacks.  Greville  is,  in  fact,  one 
of  the  last  writers  of  the  old-fashioned  '  character,'  or  true 
epitaph  ;  he  only  cares  to  be  right,  and  does  not  practise 
emphasis ;  he  describes  wits  and  statesmen,  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  Talleyrand,  D'Orsay,  Rogers,  at  first-hand,  never 
borrowing  his  opinions.  The  judgements  of  his  later  years  are 
milder,  though  not  less  decisive,  than  of  old.  The  '  characters  ' 
are  the  halting-points  in  a  level  narrative  ;  and  of  this  the 
staple  is  political  ;  its  theme  is  the  actual  and  inner  story  of 
public  events.  Greville  is  a  gentleman  ;  he  is  no  dealer  in 
seamy  chronicles,  but  he  avoids  dulness  without  any  effort ; 
and  his  material  is  used,  and  much  trusted,  by  the  professional 
historians. 


Some  few  classics,  greater  or  smaller,  of  the  immense  litera- 
ture of  travel  may  now  be  named  in  passing.  Darwin's  and 
Huxley's  Voyages,  Kinglake's  Ebihen,  Froude's  Oceana,  and 
other  such  incidental  works  by  men  of  science  or  letters,  have 
been  referred  to  before.  The  professional  travellers  and  ex- 
plorers fall  into  two  chief  classes,  according  as  their  scene  of 
action  is  Asia  or  Africa.  The  most  salient  figure  among  them 
all  is  that  of  Sir  Richard  Burton1  (1821-90),  who  wandered  over 
both  those  continents  and  recorded  endless  adventures  and 
escapes.  A  great  linguist,  anthropologist,  and  observer,  he 
left  on  many  volumes  the  imprint  of  his  fierce  and  flawed  and 
splendid  personality.  His  Indian  days  are  recorded  in  Scinde, 
or  the  Unhappy  Valley  (1851)  and  other  books  ;  his  penetra- 
tion of  Somaliland  in  First  Footsteps  in  East  Africa  (1856). 
The  pictures  of  his  reception  at  Harar  by  the  Amir,  and  of  his 
fight  at  Berbera,  by  the  side  of  Speke,  against  tremendous  odds, 
are  in  Burton's  most  stirring  and  grimmest  style.  Between 
came  his  best-known  adventure,  told  in  his  Pilgrimage  to  El- 
Medinah  and  Meccah  (1856).  Like  Palgrave  after  him,  Burton 
passed  as  a  Musalman  ;  he  got  not  only  into  the  dress,  but 
into  the  mental  skin  of  the  Oriental ;  he  was  the  first  English- 
man to  reach  Mecca  ;   and  his  chronicle,  as  usual,  is  a  contri- 


316  TRAVELLERS:   BURTON— PALGRAVE 

bution  to  knowledge,  as  well  as  an  outpouring  of  biting  descrip- 
tion and  vivid  prejudice.  It  is  rather  overloaded  with  lqre, 
and  is  written  in  Burton's  hasty,  abrupt  and  hammering,  but 
always  virile  style.  He  was  also  a  pioneer  in  Africa,  and  his 
books  on  the  great  waters  and  lakes  brought  him  into  one  of 
his  hot  disputes  with  his  partner  Speke.  His  journeys  in 
Brazil,  West  Africa,  and  Paraguay  produced  yet  more  volumes. 
Later  came  his  translation  of  The  Arabian  Nights  (1885-8),  which 
led  to  a  storm.  Burton's  Arabic  scholarship  and  his  debt  to 
other  Orientalists  have  been  much  canvassed  ;  and  he  had 
included  many  notes  and  disquisitions  of  a  naked  kind  on  the 
sexual  custom  and  pathology  of  the  East  ;  these  are  part  of  a 
vast  mass  of  material,  both  anthropological  and  literary,  which 
he  brought  together  for  the  first  time. 

Burton  could  not  discuss  any  topic  with  scientific  coldness, 
or  with  anything  but  gusto.  He  is  given  to  long  intemperate 
digressions ;  his  English,  though  charged  with  vigour,  is  often 
clumsy  and  untrained,  and  in  his  translations  is  needlessly 
packed  with  archaism  and  affectation.  His  book  certainly 
brings  out  the  sickly  monotony  and  unreadable  dulness  of 
many  of  the  celebrated  Nights,  but  it  is  a  great  and  valuable 
work.  He  also  made  a  remarkable  translation  of  the 
Lusiads  of  Camoens,  which  has  been  highly  praised  in  spite 
of  its  deliberate  coinages  and  artifices  of  diction  ;  but  the  effect 
is  not  poetical.  Many  of  Burton's  labours  belong  less  to 
literature  than  to  learning,  and  to  the  history  of  action,  and  to 
the  records  of  national  achievement. 

There  is  far  more  charm  and  craftsmanship  in  another  tale 
of  adventure,  the  Narrative  of  a  Year's  Journey  through  Central 
and  Eastern  Arabia  (1865).  The  author,  William  Gifford 
Palgrave,  was  the  son  of  Sir  Francis  Palgrave,  the  learned 
historian,  and  the  brother  of  Francis  Turner  Palgrave,  the 
anthologist  and  poet.  First  a  Jesuit  missionary  and  after- 
wards in  the  diplomatic  service,  Palgrave  made  his  way,  in 
the  guise  of  a  Syrian  merchant  and  physician,  through  the 
country  of  the  fanatical  Wahabees.  His j  original)  ? aim  was  to 
survey  the  ground  for  religious  propaganda,  but  his  actual 
work  was  to  study  and  describe  geography,  Arabian  politics, 
and  men  and  manners.  Palgrave's  easy,  rather  digressive  style, 
and  his  pervading  sense  of  colour,  comedy,  and  character  make 
his  Narrative  something  of  a  work  of  art.  He  further  wrote  a 
very  attractive  story,  Hermann  Agha  (1872),  which  continues 
the  tradition  of  Hope's  Anastasius,  though  in  a  more  romantic 
fashion.     The   hero  is   a  young   German   kidnapped   by  the 


TRAVELLERS:   LAYARD— SPEKE— STANLEY     317 

Turks  ;  his  passages  with  his  beloved  Zahra,  and  his  blood- 
brother  Moharib  are  delicately  told,  and  the  book  should  be 
rescued.  And  there  is  also  vivid  matter  interspersed  in  the 
grave  monumental  books  of  Sir  Austen  Henry  Layard  on 
Nineveh  {Popular  Account  of  Discoveries,  1851  ;  Discoveries  in 
the  Ruins  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  1853) ;  Rossetti's  Burden  of 
Nineveh  was  inspired  by  them ;  but  they  are  mostly  archaeo- 
logical, and  were  eagerly  greeted  as  revelations  of  a  new  old 
world. 

Apart  from  Burton,  the  great  African  discoverers  hardly 
claim  to  be  men  of  letters  ;  they  are  more  like  Hakluyt's 
voyagers  in  their  simple  directness,  though  the  interest  of  their 
story  is  imperishable.  The  nice  observing  faculty,  as  well  as 
the  charity  and  piety,  of  the  dauntless  David  Livingstone 
shine  unconsciously  through  the  pages  of  his  Missionary  Travels 
in  South  Africa  (1857).  John  Hanning  Speke,  in  his  Journal 
of  the  Discovery  (1863),  and  his  What  Led  to  the  Discovery  of 
the  Source  of  the  Nile  (1864),  impresses  us  with  his  minute 
watchfulness,  scientific  temper,  and  irresistible  patience  ;  he 
is  one  of  Carlyle's  '  wearied  unweariable  men  '  triumphing  over 
infinite  small  rebuffs  and  miseries,  and  over  endless  black 
human  obstacles.  For  such  men  Africa  loses  every  touch  of 
glamour,  yet  her  call  is  not  to  be  resisted.  The  discoveries 
of  Sir  Henry  Morton  Stanley  (How  I  Found  Livingstone,  1872  ; 
Through  the  Dark  Continent,  1878  ;  In  Darkest  Africa,  1890) 
were  of  lasting  scientific  and  political  importance,  and  his 
books  were  numerous  ;  their  matter  keeps  them  from  being 
merely  ephemeral,  and  their  manner,  strongly  tinged  by  that 
of  American  journalism,  has  the  virtues  appropriate  to  such 
a  schooling.  The  African  Sketch-Book  of  William  Win  wood 
Reade,  a  narrative  of  his  experiences  in  Equatorial  and  West 
Africa,  is  full  of  a  downright  bluntness,  a  keen  descriptive 
power,  and  a  rough  rhetoric,  that  remind  us  at  times  of  his 
uncle,  Charles  Reade.  The  tornado,  the  gorilla-hunt,  the 
disappointing  flirtation  with  the  coloured  beauty  Ananga,  and 
the  story  of  the  Swiss  murderer  are  all  excellently,  if  some- 
times too  vulgarly,  related.  Winwood  Reade  wrote  other 
records  of  travel,  and  also  a  singular,  crude,  speculative  book, 
which  had  a  long  popularity,  called  The  Martyrdom  of  Man 
(1872). 

The  Crescent  and  the  Cross  (1844),  by  Eliot  Warburton, 
already  named  in  connexion  with  Kinglake,  is  a  much  ampler, 
more  methodical,  and  more  responsible  record  of  travel  in  the 
near  East  ;    with  something  in  it  of  the  guidebook,  in  a  day 


318     WARBURTON— CURZON— LORD  DUFFERIN 

when  the  ground  was  far  less  trodden.     The  fullest  chapters 
are  those  on  Egypt,  the  most  vivacious  perhaps  those  on  Con- 
stantinople and  the  Ionian  Islands.     Warburton's  rhetoric  is 
heavier  than  Kinglake's,  and  he  does    not  deal  in  wit  ;    but 
the  extreme  zest  of  his  narrative  and  its  multitude  of  small 
vivid  strokes  keep  it  alive.      Far  superior  in  style,  without 
the  fireworks  of    Kinglake  or  the  prolixity  of    Warburton,  is 
the   Visits  to  Monasteries   in   the  Levant  (1849)  of   the  Hon. 
Robert   Curzon,    afterwards    Lord    Zouche.     The    visits   were 
paid  more  than  ten  years  earlier  ;    Curzon,  who  afterwards 
figured  in  the  diplomatic  service,  was  not  simply  a  well-to-do 
youth  of  rank  travelling  for  curiosity,  but  an  expert  collector 
of  ancient  Oriental  books  and  manuscripts.     His  spoils,  honestly 
paid  for  and  brought  from  the  monasteries   of    Egypt   and 
Mount  Athos,  were  of   great  value.     Curzon's  style  is  light 
and  rapid,  marked  by  a  cheerful  but  not  offensive  impertinence 
and  sang  froid,  and  his  dialogue  is  full  of  point.     The  accounts 
of  the  Orthodox  Patriarch  who  could  not  understand  how  a 
mere  Archbishop,  though  of  Canterbury,  could  be  the  head 
of  a  Christian  community  ;  of  the  other  dignitary  who  softened, 
under  the  influence  of  the  drink  called  '  rosoglio,'  to  bargain 
for  treasures  ;    the  writer's  ascent  up  the  vertical  ladder,  in 
places  broken,  to  the  monastery  of  Barlaam,  and  his  visit  to 
that  of  Meteora,  well  so  named  ;    his  overawing  of  a  group  of 
bandits,  and  his  defeat  by  a  battalion  of  fleas, — are  all  clear- 
cut  stories,  amusing,  well-bred,  and  well  written. 

In  fashion  akin  to  Edihen,  but  with  less  of  real  savour,  are 
Lord  Dufferin's  Letters  from  High  Latititdes  (1857),  relating  the 
author's  stay  in  Iceland  and  his  voyage  in  a  schooner  yacht 
through  the  perils  of  the  Polar  bergs.  His  modesty  cannot 
hide  his  nerve  and  coolness  ;  he  has  an  eye  for  the  strangeness 
of  those  heavens,  and  for  the  '  pale  lilac  '  of  the  peaks,  and  for 
the  hues  of  the  ice,  of  which  he  feels  the  obsession  ;  he  writes, 
too,  with  the  mounting  spirits  of  his  Sheridan  blood  ;  and  he 
has  a  genuine  enthusiasm  for  the  old  Northern  stories.  An 
amateur  in  knowledge,  he  retails  them,  like  everything  else, 
romantically,  and,  alas,  '  brilliantly  '  at  times,  and  not  at  all 
in  the  thrifty  and  impeccable  saga-style.  The  book  is  still 
capital  popular  writing,  if  deficient  in  fineness.  The  spirited 
young  lord  jokes  easily  and  generously  about  the  remote, 
hospitable  islanders,  whom  he  has  hardly  time  to  understand. 
The  '  letters,'  it  is  likely,  are  only  such  in  name  ;  they  seem  to 
have  been  made  up  at  home  afterwards,  from  documents  and 
memories,  and  rounded  off. 


SIR  C.  DILKE— BORROW  319 

Last  may  be  mentioned,  somewhat  in  a  rank  apart,  the 
Greater  Britain  (1868)  of  Sir  Charles  Dilke  (1843-1911),  which 
chronicles  his  tour  through  Canada,  America,  Polynesia, 
Tasmania,  New  Zealand,  Australia,  and  India,  and  which, 
besides  being  an  easy  and  humorous  narrative,  is  bound  together 
by  its  wide  and  statesmanlike  point  of  view,  and  pervaded  by 
a  steady  vision  of  the  future  and  unity  of  the  English  -speaking 
countries.  His  Problems  of  Greater  Britain  (1890)  is  a  maturer 
expansion  of  the  same  thesis.  Dilke  returns  more  especially 
to  the  questions  raised  by  the  position  of  the  subject  and  coloured 
races,  black,  yellow,  and  red,  and  of  special  communities  like 
the  Mormon  ;  and  by  the  Russian  threat  to  India.  Much  of  his 
thinking  is  by  no  means  antiquated.  His  bent  of  opinion  is 
of  course  liberal,  but  is  the  very  reverse  of  insular,  and  he 
judges  no  question  on  party  lines.  He  also  had,  it  may  be 
added,  a  vein  of  pleasing  and  unexpected  wit.  In  his  little 
satire,  or  squib,  The  Fall  of  Prince  Florestan  of  Monaco,  printed 
anonymously  in  1874,  a  young  German  princeling  succeeds  to  the 
throne  of  Monaco,  has  some  trouble  with  his  microscopic  army 
and  still  more  with  the  Jesuits,  who  are  the  real  potentates, 
and  soon  resigns  his  job  with  much  relief  and  returns  to  Cam- 
bridge. In  spite  of  many  topical  allusions,  now  lost,  this 
elegant  light  romance  remains  a  model  of  its  sort. 


VI 

There  is  no  expressive  name  for  the  kind  of  book  which 
George  Henry  Borrow  x  (1803-81)  was  the  inventor,  and  which 
died  with  him.  His  work  has  plain- affinities  with  the  vagrant, 
or  tramping,  novel  of  Lesage  and  Defoe  ;  but  then  it  is  not 
fiction,  for  it  is  mostly  a  record,  in  the  spirit  if  not  in  the  letter, 
of  fact.  Nor  is  it,  in  the  usual  sense,  autobiography  ;  for  no 
one  can  measure  the  precise  degree  of  fancy,  conscious  or  in- 
voluntary, with  which  Borrow  invests  the  truth.  He  had,  no 
doubt,  an  exceptionally  strong  memory,  not  only  for  the  voca- 
bularies of  foreign  tongues,  but  for  the  incidents  and  conversa- 
tions of  years  long  past.  But  on  either  side  of  all  such  memories, 
however  precise,  there  is  always  a  sharp  knife-edge  of  dark- 
ness ;  and  this  darkness  the  artist  fancy,  perhaps  masquerad- 
ing as  memory,  ever  seeks  to  invade,  as  though  with  a  silent, 
silk-spinning  motion  of  the  hands  :  and  soon  fancy  comes  to 
know  what  might,  what  must,  what  shall  have  been  the  ante- 
cedents, the  fillings-out,  and  the  sequel,  of  this  well-remembered 
dialogue,  or  of  that  occurrence.     This,  I  think,  is  not  to  put 


320  BORROW  :    THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN 

too  fine  a  point  upon  Borrow's  procedure,  if  we  add  that  he 
often  well  knows  what  he  was  doing,  and  practises  plenty  of 
conscious  arrangement  and  invention  too  ;  while  at  other 
times  he  gives,  as  it  were,  a  phonographic  record.  His  art  is 
essentially  roguish  in  its  gravity  ;  and  his  delight  in  posturing 
as  a  mystery-man,  polyglot  traveller,  and  scholar  gives  us  the 
pleasure  which  he  means  it  to  give.  Where  precisely  Borrow's 
loomwork x  begins  and  ends  has  been  much  disputed.  Detail 
apart,  it  is  probably  most  active,  first  of  all  in  his  long  inserted 
stories,  like  the  postillion's  in  The  Romany  Rye,  and  secondly, 
in  parts  of  the  dialogue.  Some  of  these  things  would  defy  the 
longest  memory  ;  and  we  cannot  be  too  grateful  to  Borrow  for 
working  as  he  did.  The  creative  process  is  more  freely  at  play 
in  some  of  Borrow's  books  than  in  others.  His  original  works 
are  five  in  number,  which  really  group  themselves  into  three ; 
and  to  them  may  be  added  his  correspondence. 

The  first  two  are  the  fruit  of  the  work  that  Borrow  did  in 
the  Peninsula  from  1835  to  1840,  as  the  agent  of  the  British 
and  Foreign  Bible  Society  for  the  circulation  of  the  Scriptures. 
The  Zincali,  or  An  Account  of  the  Gypsies  in  Spain  (1841),  is  a 
monograph,  somewhat  disjointed,  but  one  of  the  first  of  its 
kind  in  the  language,  upon  a  subject  till  then  hardly  explored.2 
The  ethnological  and  philological  matter  in  the  book  is  of  much 
less  value  than  its  lively  direct  faculty  of  observation.  The 
gypsies  also  take  their  turn  in  the  pageant  of  The  Bible  in  Spain 
(1842),  the  publication  that  first  brought  Borrow  into  note, 
not  only  with  the  eager  pious  public  but  with  the  lay  world. 
Long  stretches  of  The  Bible  in  Spain  are  transcripts,  more  or 
less  trimmed  up,  but  sometimes  almost  verbal,  of  the  letters  3 
that  he  wrote  to  the  Society  and  afterwards  recovered.  Such 
letters,  as  they  stand,  are  good  literature  ;  they  needed  little 
trimming.  But  for  the  material  of  at  least  half  the  book  no 
original  letters  are  extant ;  and  it  is  clear  that  in  the  dialogues 
(of  which  in  the  letters  there  are  few)  the  artist  is  at  his  ease. 
Not  all  the  coincidences  are  too  strange  to  be  true,  and  most 
of  the  facts  and  personages  are  drawn  from  life.  Borrow, 
however,  is  consciously  picturesque  and  naturally  '  romantic  '  ; 
The  Bible  in  Spain  has  the  familiar  note  of  newness,  like  Gray's 
letters  and  Waverley.  '  No  one  has  seen  this  landscape  before,' 
Borrow  seems  to  say  :  '  my  brigands,  gypsies,  and  thieves,  are 
new  brigands.  I  am  the  first  to  make  you  feel  the  fierce,  un- 
English  sunshine,  coming  sheer  down  on  the  barren  rock.  The 
Lord  has  left  it  to  me  to  depict  these  primitive,  knifing  passions, 
which  by  no  means  work  themselves  out  into  honest  British 


THE  BIBLE  IN  SPAIN  321 

fisticuffs. '  One  bye-product  of  The  Bible  in  Spain  is  Borrow 's 
strain  of  religious  unction,  which  recurs  in  his  later  writings. 
He  seems  to  have  learnt  this  idiom,  half  sincerely,  half  diplo- 
matically, during  his  earlier  service  under  the  Bible  Society 
in  Russia,  when  he  worked  as  editor,  transcriber,  and  printer 
of  a  Manchu  Testament.  Of  that  sojourn,  apart  from  certain 
translations,  Borrow's  letters  are  unluckily  his  only  memorial. 
The  Bible  in  Spain  is  full  of  the  anti-Romish  rhetoric  and 
virulence  which  the  author  during  his  stay  in  the  country  had 
discreetly  repressed.  It  also  contains  not  only  abundance  of 
rich  and  coloured  writing,  but  many  examples  of  the  plainer 
and  yet  subtler  manner  into  which  he  was  afterwards  to  settle 
down.  Both  these  varieties  of  Borrow's  English  can  be  traced 
in  the  well-known  passage  which  describes  his  journey  through 
the  '  Black  Pass,'  on  the  way  from  Santander  to  Madrid. 
He  appreciated  Richard  Ford's  description  of  the  book  as  a 
'  Gil  Bias  in  water  colours.' 

The  sun  had  set  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  Suddenly  a  man, 
with  his  face  covered  with  blood,  rushed  out  of  the  pass.  *  Turn 
back,  sir,'  he  said,  '  in  the  name  of  God  ;  there  are  murderers  in 
that  pass  ;  they  have  just  robbed  me  of  my  mule  and  all  I  possess, 
and  I  have  hardly  escaped  with  life  from  their  hands.'  I  scarcely 
know  why,  but  I  made  him  no  answer  and  proceeded  ;  indeed  I 
was  so  weary  and  unwell  that  I  cared  not  what  became  of  me.  We 
entered  :  the  rocks  rose  perpendicularly,  right  and  left,  entirely 
intercepting  the  scanty  twilight,  so  that  the  darkness  of  the  grave, 
or  rather  the  blackness  of  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,  reigned 
around  us,  and  we  knew  not  where  we  went,  but  trusted  to  the 
instinct  of  the  horses,  who  moved  on  with  heads  close  to  the  ground. 
The  only  sound  which  we  heard  was  the  plash  of  a  stream,  which 
tumbled  down  the  pass.  I  expected  every  moment  to  feel  a  knife 
at  my  throat,  but  '  it  was  not  so  written.'  We  threaded  the  pass 
without  meeting  a  human  being.     (Ch.  xxxv.) 

There  is  more  history  and  more  scenery  in  The  Bible  in  Spain 
than  in  Borrow's  other  books,  apart  from  Wild  Wales.  The 
bright  sharp  atmosphere  of  the  country  is  conveyed,  as  it  is 
in  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson's  study  of  Velasquez.  The  pace  and 
zest  of  the  narrative,  the  ever-changing  pageant  of  motley 
talk  and  adventure,  are  surprising.  The  vogue  of  The  Bible 
in  Spain  was  deserved,  and  there  is  nothing  quite  like  it.  But 
one  volume  has  earned  a  place  beside  it,  namely  the  learned, 
accurate,  and  vivid  Handbook  to  Spain,  first  published  in  1845, 
and  written  by  Borrow's  friend  Richard  Ford,1  the  traveller, 
connoisseur  of  art,  bon  vivant,  and  wit.  Ford's  lightness  and 
vol.  t.  x 


322  LAVENORO  AND  THE  ROMANY  RYE 

gaiety  serve  to  correct  Borrow 's  more  sombre  tone.  The  Bible 
in  Spain  is  imposing  ;  but  in  workmanship  it  is  not  so  strange 
or  so  fine  as  its  two  successors,  the  poor  reception  of  which  is  a 
classical  instance  of  the  follies  of  criticism. 


VII 

Borrow,  who  had  married  an  English  lady  whilst  in  Spain, 
returned,  settled  down,  living  mostly  at  Oulton  in  Suffolk  ; 
and  during  ten  years  brooded  over  his  Lavengro  :  The  Scholar — 
The  Gypsy — The  Priest,  which  appeared  in  1851.  Its  sequel, 
The  Romany  Rye,  waited  till  1857  ;  but  the  two  form  one  con- 
tinuous work.  In  the  opening  lines  of  The  Romany  Rye,  the 
author  '  awoke  at  the  first  break  of  day  '  ;  the  postillion's 
story,  finished  on  the  very  night  before,  forms  the  conclusion 
of  Lavengro.  And  The  Romany  Rye  itself  ends  suddenly,  with 
the  author  walking  away  from  Horncastle  Fair  in  the  year 
1825,  and  '  thinking  he  will  go  '  to  India  ;  which  he  does  not 
do.  The  two  works  together,  therefore,  form  a  fairly  con- 
tinuous autobiography,  from  the  writer's  earliest  recollections 
down  to  his  twenty -third  year.  The  next  seven  years,  1825-32, 
are  the  so-called  '  veiled  period,'  of  which  he  has  left  no  record, 
and  of  which  the  history  is  but  raggedly  pieced  together  from 
external  data.  The  Russian  episode  occupied  the  two  years 
that  followed.  Then,  late  in  1835,  he  started  for  the  Peninsula. 
He  seems  to  have  been  about  thirty-eight  when  he  formed  the 
plan  of  chronicling  his  early  fife,  and  fifty-four  when  he  com- 
pleted it.  The  result  could  hardly  be  more  particular  and 
vivid  had  he  kept  a  diary.     But  he  says  : 

I  have  endeavoured  to  describe  a  dream,  partly  of  study,  partly 
of  adventure,  in  which  will  be  found  copious  notices  of  books,  and 
many  descriptions  of  fife  and  manners,  some  in  a  very  unusual  form. 

Thus  opens  the  preface  to  Lavengro ;  and  half  the  illusion  of 
the  dream  is  caused  by  the  habit  of  prosaic — not  tedious — 
diffuseness  and  iteration.  The  linguistic  disquisitions,  which 
really  are  tedious,  but  can  be  run  over  lightly,  help  the  illusion 
too.  Doubtless  Borrow  showed  off  before  his  unlettered 
hearers,  and  half-bored,  half -impressed  them,  in  just  that  way. 
His  tirades  against  the  Pope  have  the  same  effect ;  Borrow 
for  some  reason  addresses  that  potentate  by  the  Russian  term 
batuschka  \batyuschka],  which  is  not  translateable  as  '  little 
father,'  or  '  daddy,'  as  he  intends  it  to  be. 

There  is  little  in  Lavengro  and  The  Romany  Rye  that  does 


BORROWS  CHARACTER  323 

not  wear  well.  All  but  the  best  fiction  of  the  time  has  lost  hold 
on  us  in  comparison  with  Borrow's  notable  passages — his 
poisoning  by  Mrs.  Heme,  his  battle  with  the  Tinman,  and  the 
noble,  clean,  and  wonderful  idyll  of  Isopel  Berners,  which  marks 
IBe  summit  of  Borrow's  writing  and  the  effect  of  which  is  en- 
hanced by  his  want  of  heart,  and  even  of  shame.  The  ordinary 
narrative  is  hardly  inferior.  From  the  Jew  who  called  the 
infant  Borrow  '  a  prophet's  child,'  down  to  the  final  chat  with 
the  recruiting-sergeant,  all  is  sustained,  little  is  superfluous. 
The  speech  of  the  gypsies,  like  that  of  jockeys  and  postillions, 
is  sometimes  artificially  raised  and  made  bookish ;  but  Borrow 
gives  the  gypsy  soul  and  essence,  so  we  are  assured  by  those 
who  know  them  best,  more  truthfully  than  anyone  before  or 
since  his  day.  He  sees  them  in  daylight  as  they  are,  without 
false  romanticism.  He  does  not  hate  them  for  their  vices, 
though  the  only  commandment  which  they  keep  is  the  seventh  ; 
and  his  sympathy  with  their  passion  for  liberty  is  profound. 
He  knows  that  he  can  leave  them  at  any  time  ;  but  he  has  no 
greater  pleasure  than  to  talk  awhile  with  people  who  are  not 
respectable  ;  or  who  have  character,  whether  they  be  within 
or  without  the  pale. 

It  is  Borrow's  art,  perhaps,  rather  than  Borrow  himself  that 
is  mysterious.  He  is  indeed  full  of  contradictions  ;  but  there  is 
truth  in  his  remark  to  Mr.  Petulengro  : 

'  There  you  are  mistaken,  Jasper.  I  am  not  cunning.  If  people 
think  I  am,  it  is  because,  being  made  up  of  art  themselves,  sim- 
plicity of  character  is  a  puzzle  to  them.' 

The  chief  puzzle  in  Borrow  seems  to  arise  from  his  callous- 
ness and  self-centredness.  He  probably  sees  how  well  we  should 
like  to  break  his  head  when  he  torments  Isopel  with  Armenian 
verbs  or  questions  Ursula  under  the  hedge  ;  but  he  does  not 
care,  or  prefers  that  we  should  be  angry.  His  ruthless  egoism, 
which  is  quite  consistent  with  some  good  nature  and  an  admira- 
tion for  good  things,  is  necessary  to  the  production  of  his  effects, 
and  is  at  least  on  no  mean  scale.  He  was  in  part  of  Cornish, 
in  part  of  Huguenot  origin  ;  but  he  was  born  in  Norfolk,  and 
adopted  that  shire,  and  acquired,  if  only  by  protective  mimicry, 
some  of  the  true  East  Anglian  hardness  ;  nor  would  anything  less 
have  carried  him  through  all  his  rebuffs  and  tight  corners.  We 
do  not  ask  Odysseus  to  be  sentimental,  or  to  conform  to  the 
ideals  of  Middlemarch  or  of  the  author  of  the  Egoist. 

Yet  Borrow's  thirst  for  questioning,  understanding,  and 
worrying  his  fellow-creatures  is  rooted  in  a  true  sympathy, 


324  WILD  WALES 

which  is  half  curiosity,  yet  is  by  no  means  inhuman.  He 
really  drew  people  out,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people, 
digging  into  their  histories  during  the  first  five  minutes,  and 
making  them  talk.  The  response  that  he  nearly  always  found 
is  a  proof  of  this  gift  of  sympathy.  He  was  a  great  listener  and 
cross-examiner,  a  true  historian  of  things  seen  and  heard, 
with  something  universal  in  his  temper,  which  is  not  indeed 
the  temper  of  the  great  poetic  interpreters,  but  for  which  no 
mere  theory  of  human  brotherhood,  or  humanitarian  exalta- 
tion, can  ever  be  a  substitute.  Yet  all  this  would  have  been 
lost  without  his  queer  selective  skill  and  wordcraft ;  and  to  do 
justice  to  that  we  must  consult  the  last  of  his  original  works, 
Wild  Wales,  which  appeared  in  1862. 

Wild  Wales,  its  Peoples,  Language,  and  Scenery  was  worked 
up  from  four  notebooks  or  diaries,  written  during  a  trip  which 
Borrow  made  along  with  his  wife  and  step -daughter,  in  1854. 
Much  of  it  records  the  trampings  of  the  tall,  white-haired, 
black-clad,  wideawaked  figure,  equipped  with  the  celebrated 
green  umbrella  to  which  he  devotes  one  lyric  page  ;  wherein 
the  musical  word  umbrella  recurs  like  some  motif  in  De  Quincey's 
Dream- Fugue.  Thus  Wild  Wales,  like  The  Bible  in  Spain, 
but  unlike  the  intervening  volumes,  bears  the  stamp  of  a 
literal  transcript  from  written  material.  But  it  is  a  transcript 
expanded  at  great  length  with  the  minuteness  at  once  of  a 
guidebook  and  of  a  professional  interviewer  :  Borrow's  long 
memory,  with  who  knows  how  much  of  his  Defoe-like  piecing- 
out  faculty,  is  still  as  vigorous  as  ever.  The  rough  material 
for  just  such  another  survey  can  be  found  in  the  notes  of  his 
walking  tour  in  Galloway,1  made  in  1866 — jotted  scraps  which 
the  artist  took  home  but  unhappily  never  wrought  up.  He 
has  a  signal  power  of  catching  at  once,  chameleon- wise,  the 
physical  and  mental  atmosphere  of  any  land  in  which  he  finds 
himself.  As  he  goes  in  the  train  across  England,  he  is  in  turn 
'  enthusiastically  Saxon  '  ;  then,  as  he  sees  a  Danish  name  on 
a  station^  Danish  ;  then  in  Birmingham  a  '  modern  English- 
man,' still  '  enthusiastically  '  ;  then,  refusing  to  harbour  any 
'  Norman  enthusiasm  '  at  all,  he  glows  '  with  all  the  Welsh 
enthusiasm  with  which  I  glowed  when  I  first  started  in  the 
direction  of  Wales.'  All  this  is  very  genuine,  though  playful, 
and  it  is  also  a  cunning  overture.  Welsh  he  had  learned  to 
read  and  translate  in  his  youth  ;  and  a  Welsh  groom  had 
taught  him  to  speak  the  tongue  sufficiently  to  serve  as  a  pass- 
port. The  result  is  one  of  Borrow's  most  delightful  and  satis- 
factory, though  not  his  greatest,  books.     It  would  take  long  to 


BORROWS  ENGLISH  325 

describe  the  merits  of  Wild  Wales.  The  publisher,  Murray, 
at  first  feared  that,  owing  to  its  '  want  of  stirring  incident,  it 
would  not  succeed  ' ;  but  he  added  truly  that  it  is  '  beautifully 
written  and  in  a  style  of  English  undefiled,  which  few  writers 
can  surpass.'  And  in  the  historical  portions,  as  in  the  pages 
on  the  Welsh  poets,  there  is  a  sober  eloquence,  unlike  the 
bravura  manner  of  The  Bible  in  Spain.  There  is  little  declama- 
tion :  Borrow  had  vented  his  ire  and  prejudice,  it  would  seem, 
in  the  splenetic  but  most  entertaining  appendix  to  The  Romany 
Rye,  which  had  been  too  much  for  his  public.  But  the  essence 
of  Wild  Wales  lies  in  its  delicate  notes  of  scenery,  in  its  por- 
traits and  conversations,  and  in  the  instinctive  skill  with  which, 
one  after  another,  Borrow's  wayside  companions  reveal  their 
natures  under  his  leading.  The  book  forms  a  gallery  of  national 
types — the  Welsh  American,  the  magistrate's  clerk,  the  hog- 
driver,  the  waggoner,  the  country  clergyman,  and  a  score  of 
others.  Borrow's  sympathy  did  not  extend  to  the  English 
rustic,  and  he  often  resents  the  loutish  manners  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  ;  a  twist  in  his  temper  which  at  once  put  him  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  Welsh  dislike  and  mistrust  of  the  Saxon.  There 
are  a  few  scenes  of  the  old  salience,  such  as  the  sudden  meeting 
with  Captain  Bosvile,  and  the  page  in  which  Borrow,  under 
threat  of  a  beating,  falls  in  with  the  mistake  of  the  Irish  reapers, 
and,  in  the  character  of  Father  Toban,  gives  them  a  Latin 
blessing.  But  the  narrative  is  mostly  even  and  quiet  ;  inn 
after  inn,  valley  after  valley,  talk  after  talk,  succeed  with  a 
sameness  that  is  not  monotony.  Borrow,  like  Hazlitt,  is  one 
of  those  who  can  make  literature  out  of  a  breakfast -table.  He 
has  the  same  passion  for  the  roads,  and  for  the  '  noble  art,' 
and  for  literature  ;  and  though  his  range  of  intellect  is  smaller, 
and  he  is  not  so  strong  in  the  article  of  general  ideas,  he  is  less 
fierce  than  Hazlitt,  and  more  sociable,  and  readier  to  get  inside 
the  skin  of  others,  if  only  for  the  moment. 

VIII 

There  is  no  sign  of  his  owing  any  debt  to  Hazlitt ;  nor  is  it 
easy  to  see  where  he  learned  the  indefinable  open  secret  of  his 
English.  Some  clues  there  are  ;  Borrow  more  than  once  pays 
his  tribute  to  Defoe  ;  both  writers  depict  humble  life  and  the 
outlaw  world,  and  create  their  illusion  by  the  method  of  '  minute 
particulars,'  and  by  the  use  of  a  subdued  key.  But  in  all  else 
they  differ  ;  and  part  of  the  likeness  is  maybe  simply  due  to 
a  common  taste  for  the  literature  of  '  low  life,'  and  for  its 


326  BORROWS  ENGLISH 

artistic  virtues.  Borrow  in  his  youth  compiled  Celebrated 
Trials,  in  six  volumes,  for  the  sweating  bookseller  Sir  Richard 
Phillips  ;  and  in  a  well-known  passage,  which  will  bear  re- 
quoting,  he  gives  his  notion  of  the  non  imitabile  in  style  : 

What  struck  me  most  with  respect  to  these  lives  was  the  art 
which  the  writers,  whoever  they  were,  possessed  of  telling  a  plain 
story.  It  is  no  easy  matter  to  tell  a  story  plainly  and  distinctly 
by  mouth  ;  but  to  tell  one  on  paper  is  difficult  indeed,  so  many 
snares  he  in  the  way.  People  are  afraid  to  put  down  what  is 
common  on  paper,  they  seek  to  embellish  their  narratives,  as  they 
think,  by  philosophic  speculations  and  reflections  ;  they  are  anxious 
to  shine,  and  people  who  are  anxious  to  shine  can  never  tell  a  plain 
story.  '  So  I  went  with  them  to  a  music  booth,  where  they  made 
me  almost  drunk  with  gin,  and  began  to  talk  their  flash  language, 
which  I  did  not  understand,'  says,  or  is  made  to  say,  Henry  Simms, 
executed  at  Tyburn  some  seventy  years  before  the  time  of  which 
I  am  speaking.  I  have  always  looked  upon  this  sentence  as  a 
masterpiece  of  the  narrative  style,  it  is  so  concise  and  yet  so  very 
clear.     (Lavengro,  ch.  xxxvi.) 

This  '  racy,  genuine  language,'  as  he  calls  it,  Borrow  seeks 
to  attain,  and  constantly  does  attain,  especially  in  plain  descrip- 
tion and  in  dialogue.  One  thing  which  he  may  have  learnt 
from  the  Newgate  model  is  when  to  stop  : 

'  Brother,  I  have  been  with  you  near  three  hours  beneath  this 
hedge.     I  will  go  to  my  husband.' 

'  Does  he  know  that  you  are  here  ?  ' 

'  He  does,  brother.' 

'  And  is  he  satisfied  ?  ' 

'  Satisfied  !  Of  course.  Lor',  you  gorgios  !  Brother,  I  go  to 
my  husband  and  my  house.'  And,  thereupon,  Ursula  rose  and 
departed. 

After  waiting  a  little  time  I  also  arose  ;  it  was  now  dark,  and  I 
thought  I  could  do  no  better  than  betake  myself  to  the  dingle  ; 
at  the  entrance  of  it  I  found  Mr.  Petulengro.     (Romany  Rye,  ch.  xi.) 

Borrow  '  muses  deeply  '  afterwards  on  his  talk  with  Ursula, 
but  he  keeps  his  meditations  separate  ;  the  dialogue  itself  is 
sharply  finished  :  there  is  no  fumbling  with  the  conclusion. 
Every  conversation  in  Wild  Wales,  if  examined,  will  be  seen 
to  have  this  trait.  In  other  passages  there  is  a  different  kind 
of  craft,  suggested  by  a  more  sophisticated  writer,  namely 
Sterne.  But  this  is  confined  to  a  few  pages.  The  conversa- 
tions ascribed  by  Borrow  to  his  parents  recall  those  of  the 
parents  of  Tristram  Shandy.  But  the  temper  of  Sterne  is 
not  that  of  Borrow.     Sterne  relishes  and  masters  the  niceties 


BORROWS  ENGLISH  327 

of  language  ;  but  his  relish  is  like  the  ecstasy  of  an  ape — an 
ape  of  genius — over  the  flavour  of  a  rare  nut.  Borrow  has  not 
that  sort  of  connoisseurship,  and  he  writes  like  a  man.  To 
describe  his  style  *■  at  its  best  we  might  use  metaphors  drawn 
from  the  '  noble  art '  he  admired  ;  it  is  muscular,  middle- 
weight English,  in  the  best  training  and  without  an  ounce  of 
needless  flesh.  He  has  his  own  devices  for  making  his  dialogue 
seem  actual.  One  of  them  is  that  repetition,  or  repercussion, 
of  words,  the  effect  of  which  is  to  make  the  talk  go  slowly, 
just  at  the  pace  of  real  time,  and  also  rather  laboriously,  as 
talk  actually  does.  This  effect  is  cumulative,  and  could  only 
be  shown  by  long  quotation.  But  a  few  lines,  in  which  the 
freedom  is  taken  of  italicising  the  echoed  words,  will  give  some 
conception  of  it.  The  fine  old  English  gentleman  with  the 
two  terriers,  the  magistrate  to  whom  Lavengro  has  brought  a 
thousand  pounds,  administers  Madeira  to  his  young  guest : 

'  It  is  very  good,'  said  I. 

'  Did  you  ever  taste  better  Madeira  ?  ' 

'  I  never  before  tasted  Madeira.'' 

'  Then  you  ask  for  a  wine  without  knowing  what  it  is  ? ' 

'  I  ask  for  it,  sir,  that  I  may  know  what  it  is.' 

'  Well,  there  is  logic  in  that,  as  Parr  would  say  ;  you  have  heard 
of  Parr  ?  ' 

'  Old  Parr  ?  ' 

'  Yes,  old  Parr,  but  not  that  Parr  ;  you  mean  the  English,  I  the 
Greek  Parr,  as  people  call  him.' 

'  I  don't  know  him ....  Suppose  we  drink  his  health  ?  ' 

'  Thank  you,  boy,  here  's  Parr's  health,  and  Whiter' s.' 

'  Who  is  Whiter  ?  ' 

'  Don't  you  know  Whiter  ?  I  thought  everybody  knew  Reverend 
Whiter,  the  philologist.  .  .  .'     (Lavengro,  ch.  xxiv.) 

For  wit  and  entertainment  this  cannot  compare  with  "a  page 
of  Copperfield  ;  but  it  is  not  dull,  and  it  is  much  more  like  the 
way  in  which  people  really  chat.  Borrow  keeps  it  up,  without 
being  dull,  for  a  long  time.  He,  in  these  dialogues,  is  always 
himself,  and  his  interlocutors,  who  are  all  different,  are  always 
themselves.     But  the  poet  Gordon  Hake  2  said  shrewdly  : 

Every  individuality  with  which  he  was  brought  into  contact  .  .  . 
had  to  be  tinged  with  colours  of  his  own  before  he  could  see  it 
at  all. 

Borrow  has  a  singular  habit  of  affecting  to  reproduce  a  long 
mental  soliloquy  of  his  own,  dated  many  years  back.  He 
invents  past  words  which  were,  avowedly,  never  even  uttered. 


328  OTHER  WORKS 

Such  reports,  like  the  speeches  in  Thucydides,  are  nevertheless 
true  in  substance  ;  for  it  is  just  these  ruminations,,  especially 
when  they  were  painful,  that  a  man  remembers  best.  No  one 
can  forget  Borrow's  fits  of  '  the  honors,'  or  his  misery  on  the 
eve  of  his  battle  with  the  Tinman,  or  how  he  took  comfort 
from  his  little  horse  in  the  dingle.  Though  there  is  no  theology 
in  the  matter,  the  tone  recalls  that  of  Bunyan's  Grace  Abound- 
ing : 

Was  it  possible  ?  Yes,  all  too  certain  ;  the  evil  one  was  upon 
me  ;  the  inscrutable  horror  which  I  had  felt  in  my  boyhood  had 
once  more  taken  possession  of  me.  I  thought  that  it  had  forsaken 
me  ;  that  it  would  never  visit  me  again  ;  that  I  had  outgrown  it  ; 
that  I  might  almost  bid  defiance  to  it  ;  and  I  had  even  begun  to 
think  of  it  without  horror,  as  we  are  in  the  habit  of  doing  of  horrors 
of  which  we  conceive  we  run  no  danger  ;  and  lo  !  when  least  thought 
of,  it  had  seized  me  again.  .  .  .  (Lavengro,  ch.  Ixxxiv.) 

Borrow's  other  writings,  earlier  and  later,  are  in  the  nature 
of  curiosities.1  He  had  a  large  unpublished  library  of  trans- 
lations, or  plans  for  translations,  and  actually  published 
versions  from  the  Danish  :  Romantic  Ballads,  1826,  from  the 
Kjcempeviser ;  also  from  Ewald's  Death  of  Balder,  posthu- 
mously printed.  He  produced  in  1835  his  Targum,  or  Metrical 
Translations  from  Thirty  Languages  and  Dialects  ;  in  1860,  The 
Sleeping  Bard,  from  the  Welsh  of  Elis  Wyn  ;  The  Turkish 
Jester,  translated  from  the  Turkish  ;  and  his  Romano  Lavo-Lil 
(1874),  a  wordbook  of  Romany,  which  the  learned  forthwith 
pronounced  to  be  out  of  date,  but  which  contains  some  refresh- 
ment in  the  way  of  description.  Few  will  profess  to  check 
Borrow's  knowledge  of  the  '  thirty  languages  and  dialects  '  ; 
but,  to  judge  by  examples,  some  of  his  versions  are  wildly 
loose,  while  others,  like  that  from  Filicaja,  are  stiffly  literal, 
with  some  genuine  poetic  feeling  piercing  through.  Not  many 
have  the  air  of  poetry,  though  the  vigorous  Sir  John,  from  the 
'  Old  Danish,'  is  an  exception  ;  and  the  artificially-phrased 
translation  of  Pushkin's  Talisman  catches  the  sweep  of  the 
original  rhythm.  The  prose  works  are  variegated  with  words 
and  quotations  from  many  tongues.  It  is  delightful  to  find 
Borrow  assuring  his  wife,  in  respect  of  Turkish,  that  'there 
was  a  time  when  I  wrote  it  better  than  any  other  language  '  ; 
and  informing  Lieutenant-Colonel  Napier,  at  Seville,  that  he 
had  learned  Romany  '  some  years  ago,  in  Moultan.'  These 
things  reward  the  close  reader  of  Borrow.  But  his  linguistic 
gifts,  while  useless  for  scholarship  or  philology,  were  wide  and 
genuine  ;    and  they  were  the  keys  that  enabled  him  to  talk 


OTHER  WORKS  329 

to  almost  everybody,  and  to  unlock  human  nature  in  Russia, 
in  Spain,  in  Wales,  and  among  the  English  gypsies. 

Borrow's  art  is  all  his  own,  and  his  temper  is  unique,  and  he 
carries  the  piqued  and  slightly  alienated  but  constant  reader 
through  everything.  He  resembles  some  notable,  rather  dis- 
agreeable acquaintance  in  real  life,  whom  few  quite  like,  but 
of  whom  everyone  talks  the  moment  that  he  has  left  the  room, 
and  who,  when  all  is  said,  is  inveterately  there.  And  Borrow 
is  there,  amid  the  teeming  literature  of  his  time,  with  its  acres 
of  fiction,  essays,  chronicles  of  travel,  often,  alas,  undeniably 
meritorious,  but  rapidly  yellowing  and  fading.  Borrow's 
colours  do  not  fade ;  his  work  stands,  not  by  its  queerness, 
not  by  virtue  of  anything  except  his  vision,  his  essential 
veracity  as  a  craftsman,  and  his  mother-English. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

TENNYSON 


The  public  coronation  of  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson  x  (1809-92), 
may  be  dated  in  1850,  the  year  of  In  Memoriam  and  of  the 
Laureateship.  His  title  had  really  been  established  by  his 
volume  of  1842  ;  and  to  ourselves,  as  to  a  few  observers  at 
the  time,  it  is  clearly  prophesied  in  the  volumes  of  1830  and 
1832.  It  was  natural  that  Arthur  Hallam  should  write  that 
'  the  true  heir  is  found  ' — the  heir  to  Keats  ;  and  Wordsworth, 
who  was  hard  to  please,  saluted  Tennyson  as  '  decidedly  the 
first  of  our  living  poets.'  The  greeting  of  Coleridge,2  who  died 
in  1834,  and  had  not  Ulysses  before  him,  was  more  dubious, 
although  the  young  Tennyson  was  really  a  poet  in  his  own 
tradition.  But  the  interregnum  had  not  actually  been  long, 
since  the  death  of  Byron  in  1824  ;  and  the  competitors  were 
few.  Beddoes  and  Darley  had  the  true  gift,  but  their  flights 
were  brief,  and  they  were  too  much  entangled  with  the  Eliza- 
bethans. Wade,  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  and  some  other  writers  of 
the  transition  will  be  noted  hereafter  (Ch.  xvni.).  The  field 
was  clear  for  Tennyson,  and  also  for  Browning,  whose  fame 
was  to  be  much  longer  delayed. 

We  think  too  much  of  Tennyson  as  suspiciously  respectable, 
as  the  voice  of  Victorian  England,  and  as  somehow  breaking 
with  the  freer  traditions  of  romance.  His  more  popular  work 
lends  some  truth  to  this  view  ;  but  we  must  look  at  his  best 
work,  whether  popular  or  not  ;  at  his  classical  poems,  his  lyrics, 
his  dramatic  monologues,  his  monodrama,  and  his  early  pas- 
sionate fantasies,  if  we  are  to  see  how  close  was  his  bond  with 
the  age  of  poetry  in  which  he  grew  up.  He  inherits  most 
of  these  forms,  and  carries  them  further  ;  he  does  not  break 
with  romance.  And  he  carries  on  the  succession  also  in  his 
allegorical  and  speculative  verse  ;  where,  indeed,  the  technique 
is  often  much  more  original  than  the  contents. 

Up  to  1842  his  development  is  not  wholly  unlike  that  of 
Keats.     Both   poets   begin   with   a   passionate   absorption  in 

330 


EARLY  DEVELOPMENT-SIMPLICITY  331 

natural  beauty — in  colours,  sounds,  and  odours  ;  both  command 
the  rich,  sometimes  confused  melodies  that  attend  on  such  a 
temper.  From  such  '  fine  excess  '  both  of  them  move  away 
towards  the  expression  of  the  plain,  the  grand,  and  the  heroic  ; 
away  from  Spenser  (the  sleepy  Spenser,  not  the  Platonist) 
towards  Homer  and  Dante.  And  both  of  them  get  to  the 
grand  style  ;  they  get  to  it,  fortunati  ambo  !  in  their  youth,  not 
too  late  to  preserve  intact  the  full  rich  capital  of  their  sensibility 
to  things  seen  and  heard  ;  they  retain  their  hold  of  the  words 
that  seem  to  be  such  things  rather  than  merely  to  represent 
them.  This  capital  Tennyson  never  squandered,  though  he 
lived  more  than  thrice  as  long  as  Keats.  But  to  compare 
further  would  be  misleading  ;  Tennyson  is  a  craftsman  of  very 
singular  temper,  and  it  is  not  enough  to  say  that  his  progress  is 
from  the  luxurious  to  the  heroic. 

Perhaps  his  strongest  impulse  as  an  artist  is  to  pack  his 
material.  He  was  elaborate  and  condensed  to  begin  with,  and 
without  effort.  His  diction  was  naturally  curious  and  his 
rhythm  somewhat  slow.  Then  he  followed  two  different  paths. 
He  perfected  the  elaborate  style,  the  many-faceted  verse  and 
image,  applying  it  to  ever-new  purposes — to  reflective  writing, 
to  impassioned  writing,  and  above  all  to  natural  description,  in 
which  he  is  one  of  the  masters.  But  from  this  style,  which  is 
his  regular  and  instinctive  one,  he  also  tries  to  get  away  ;  he 
seeks  to  be  bare  and  simple,  above  all  in  the  utterance  of  lyrical 
or  heroic  emotion.  And  this  end  also  he  attains  ;  but  then 
Tennyson  has  more  than  one  kind  of  simplicity,  as  Matthew 
Arnold,  in  somewhat  unfair  terms,  has  indicated.  But  I  pass 
over  the  risks  of  false  simplicity,  Or  simplesse,  which  we  come 
across  often  enough  in  Tennyson.  For  he  attains  two  kinds 
which  are  not  false.  The  first,  the  commoner  kind,  is  a  noble 
and  genuine  one,  but  it  has  the  air  of  being  striven  for,  the 
result  of  a  simplifying  process.  We  come  on  it  even  at  the  end 
of  the  prize  poem  on  Timbuctoo  (1829)  : 

and  I 
Was  left  alone  on  Calpe,  and  the  Moon 
Had  fallen  from  the  night,  and  all  was  dark  ! 

There  is  much  of  this  in  Tennyson,  and  it  gives  great  and  just 
pleasure.  But  the  other  kind  of  simplicity  seems  not  to  have 
been  sought  for  at  all,  but  to  have  taken  him  by  the  throat  ; 
it  is  natural  and  passionate  speech  that  is  born  in  a  tune. 
Tout  le  reste  est  litterature  !  we  exclaim  ;  often  splendid  litera- 
ture too,  no  doubt.  You  can  have  the  great  style,  perfect 
music,  even  undeniable  song,  without  having  what  Burns  and 


332  TENNYSON 

Heine  give  us  continually,  or  what  Tennyson  himself  gives  us 
in  0  that  'twere  possible/  .  .  .  the  lines  that  were  the  seed  of 
Maud,  or  in  Break,  break,  break !  or  in  the  first  verse  of 
Come  not,  when  I  am  dead,  or  in 

The  voice  of  the  dead  was  a  living  voice  to  me. 

When  Tennyson  writes  like  this,  we  may  think  of  the  result 
cither  as  something  rather  alien  to  his  natural  gift,  and  bestowed 
on  him  by  the  powers  from  time  to  time  ;  or,  more  truly  and 
handsomely,  as  his  real  genius  and  flame  breaking  out  and 
overcoming  the  bent  of  his  talent,  which,  eminent  and  delightful 
as  it  is,  tends  to  take  him  away  from  such  utterance  and  to 
cover  it  up.  For  his  character  is  at  times  in  conflict  with  his  art. 
He  has  plenty  of  primitive  instinct  ;  yet  much  of  his  writing 
is  out  of  keeping  with  it,  and  with  his  natural,  recorded  talk, 
and  with  his  leonine  side  ;  the  side  which  is  perceptible  in  his 
biography,  although  there  the  lion  may  be  somewhat  over- 
groomed,  with  his  mane  parted  in  the  middle. 


II 

The  Poems  by  Two  Brothers  (1827)  tell  us  little  about  Alfred 
-Tennyson  except  his  poetical  reading.  The  two  brothers  were 
in  fact  three,  and  I  shall  return  to  Frederick  Tennyson  (1807-98) 
and  to  Charles  Tennyson,  afterwards  Tennyson  Turner  (1808-79), 
both  of  whom  had  poetic  faculty.  In  the  prize  poem  Timbuctoo 
the  omens  are  plainer,  though  as  a  whole  it  is  turbid.  But  in 
the  Poems  of  1830  there  are  Mariana,  The  Dying  Swan,  and 
The  Ballad  of  Oriana.  Here  the  lyrical  magic  and  the  power 
of  imaginative  landscape -painting  are  already  assured.  In 
Adeline,  Lilian,  and  their  companions  the  effect  is  often 
mawkish  ;  they  are  rather  like  the  female  heads,  long  ago 
beloved  by  undergraduates,  of  the  late  Frank  Miles.  But  the 
lines  in  the  Ode  to  Memory  on  Tennyson's  home  at  Somersby 
are  another  thing  :  they  were  '  written  very  early  in  life/  and 
they  are  the  real  Tennyson  :  they  portray 

the  brook  that  loves 
To  purl  o'er  matted  cress  and  ribbed  sand, 
Or  dimple  in  the  dark  of  rushy  coves, 
Drawing  into  his  narrow  earthen  urn, 
At  every  elbow  and  turn, 
The  filter'd  tribute  of  the  rough  woodland. 

In  the  Poems  of  1832  (dated  1833)  the  signs  of  power  are 
abundant .     In  The  Poet,  Tennyson's  statelier  style  had  already 


POEMS  OF  1842— POETICAL  CAREER  333 

come  in  sight  ;  in  A  Dream  of  Fair  Women  it  has  arrived  ;  and 
it  has  also  arrived  (despite  the  blind  alley  of  a  moral)  in  The 
Palace  of  Art.  The  Greek  poems  now  begin  with  (Enone  and 
The  Lotos-Eaters  ;  and  Tithonus,  though  not  printed  until  I860, 
belongs  to  the  same  period.  And  the  first  of  the  mediaeval 
poems,  Malorian  only  in  its  names,  is  there  also  ;  Holman  Hunt 
was  to  draw  the  ventus  textilis,1  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe  called  it, 
of  The  Lady  of  fihalott.  In  Fatima  the  thirst  of  Oriental 
passion  is  not  weakened  by  any  hunt  after  far -sought  phrase. 
The  painful  May  Queen  and  The  Miller's  Daughter  contain,  at 
the  worst,  admirable  description. 

Many  of  these  pieces  arc  less  known  to  the  public  in  their 
earlier  shape.  Some,  like  The  Lady  of  Shalott  and  (Enone, 
were  largely  rewritten.  Tennyson  corrected  all  his  life  with 
almost  invariable  tact,  and  a  study  of  his  textual  changes  is 
the  best  clue  to  his  genius.  In  the  Poems  of  1842  these  revisions 
begin.  A  number  of  the  old  poems  are  weeded  out,  some  to 
reappear  long  after  as  Juvenilia.  It  is  well  to  have  them  all, 
not  least  The  Kraken  and  the  Supposed  Confessions,  an  early 
experiment  in  the  difficult  form  of  the  imaginary  soliloquy. 
But  the  new  pieces  of  1842,  by  common  consent,  contain  many 
of  Tennyson's  chief  titles  to  honour.  The  intricate  style  has 
now  gone  far  ;  some  of  its  varieties  may  be  seen  in  St.  Simeon 
Stylites,  Love  and  Duty,  and  The  Two  Voices.  There  is  many 
an  essay  in  simplicity,  not  always  successful,  as  Lady  Clare 
and  even  Dora  may  be  thought  to  show.  But  in  Morte  d Arthur 
and  Ulysses  the  simplicity  of  grandeur,  if  not  without  signs  of 
effort,  is  really  attained,  and  Tennyson  shows  that  he  can  render 
a  large  poetical  idea,  as  distinct  from  a  simple  mood  or  emotion, 
adequately.  Sir  Galahad,  St.  Agnes,  and  Sir  Launcelot  and 
Queen  Guinevere  counted  for  much  to  the  '  Pre-Raphaelite  ' 
artists,  and  link  them  closely  with  Tennyson.  The  mobility 
of  his  gift  is  plain  if  we  set  all  these  poems  beside  Locksley  Hall, 
or  again  beside  Will  Waterproofs  Lyrical  Monologue.  He  was 
now  the  master  of  many  measures,  including  one  that  seemed 
to  mark  him  out  for  some  poetic  adventure,  on  a  large  scale,  that 
should  be  worthy  of  it.  But  what  would  he  attempt,  what 
would  he  execute,  in  his  new  and  peculiar  species  of  blank 
verse  ?     Where,  asked  his  friends,  was  his  subject  ? 

He  at  once  used  his  metre,  not  for  a  great  subject,  but  for  a 
'  medley  '  ;  this  was  The  Princess  (1847).  And  he  had  his 
great  subject,  in  the  loss  of  his  friend  ;  although,  quite  rightly, 
he  did  not  use  blank  verse  for  it.  In  Memoriam  (1850),  the 
fruit  of  seventeen  years  of  intermittent  labour,  was  too  dis- 


334  TENNYSON 

persedly  written  for  complete  unity,  though  it  expressed 
Tennyson's  inmost  mind  and  experience.  The  same  year 
brought  him  happiness  in  his  long -deferred  marriage,  as 
well  as  the  Laureateship.  Now,  like  Pope,  he  could  '  live  and 
thrive  '  by  poetry  ;  and  his  life  had  not  so  far  been  easy  at  all  ; 
but  the  long  remainder  of  it  was  hardly  to  be  troubled  except 
by  the  paper  darts  of  criticism.  Apart  from  the  Ode  on  the 
Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  in  1852,  he  produced  little  more 
for  five  years. 

Then  came  Maud,  a  Monodrama,  in  1855,  an  unpopular 
.triumph ;  not  at  all  what  was  expected  of  Tennyson ;  but  none 
of  his  longer  poems  is  fuller  of  his  genius.  And  he  had  for 
years  been  nursing  his  Arthuriad,  which  was  to  more  than 
appease  the  public,  and  which  had  begun  so  well,  though  it 
had  begun  at  the  end,  with  Morte  a" Arthur.  Four  of  the 
Idylls  of  the  King  appeared  in  1859,  three  new  ones  in  the 
volume  of  1869,  one  two  years  later,  and  one  in  1885.  Tennyson 
meant  the  Idylls  to  be  his  most  serious  contribution  to  poetry — 
the  long -tarrying  work  on  a  large  scale  and  a  great  theme. 
The  rest  of  his  writing,  apart  from  his  plays,  consists  of  sheaf 
after  sheaf  of  poems,  many  of  them  brief  and  few  of  more  than 
middle  length.  He  went  on  inventing  ;  he  was  always  finding 
out  new  species  and  new  measures,  and  the  old  veins  were 
still  rich.  In  the  volume  (1864)  which  is  named  after  Enoch 
Arden,  that  magnified  '  English  idyll '  with  a  tropical  interlude, 
came  The  Northern  Farmer,  The  Voyage,  In  the  Valley  of 
Cauteretz;  and,  in  unmerited  small  print,  the  Experiments  in 
classic  metre  and  translation.  In  Lucretius  (1868)  Tennyson's 
dramatic  monologues  and  also  his  classical  poems  culminate. 
In  1875  his  dramatic  adventures  begin  with  Queen  Mary  ;  and 
he  continues  to  revive  the  '  chronicle  play '  in  Harold  (1876)  and 
Becket  (1884) ;  and  he  writes  romantic  dramas  like  The  Falcon, 
The  Cup,  or  The  Foresters.  Most  of  these  pieces  were  acted, 
with  all  possible  advantages,  and  in  each  of  them  there  is 
poetry  ;  but  it  is  seldom  the  right  poetry  for  a  play,  and  here- 
after they  are  more  likely  to  be  read  than  seen. 

Tennyson's  lyric  energy  was  still  fresh  and  young.  In 
Ballads  and  other  Poems,  published  in  his  seventy-first  year, 
are  to  be  seen  The  Voyage  of  Maeldune,  and  The  Revenge,  and 
Eizpah.  In  Tiresias,  and  other  Poems  (1885)  come  the  twenty 
lines  To  Virgil,  Tennyson's  poetical  forefather  ;  nor  will  any- 
thing that  he  wrote  five  longer.  Here  too  is  The  Ancient 
Sage,  which  intimates  rather  than  defines  the  settled  faith  of 
his  later  life.    There  are  many  sequels,  or  experiments  in 


CAREER  AND  REPUTATION— THE  ANTIQUE      335 

familiar  kinds,  which,  like  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After 
(1886),  are  not  always  fortunate  ;  the  skill  is  there,  but  the 
verse  does  not  stick  in  the  mind  as  of  old.  We  feel  this,  but 
we  have  to  be  careful,  in  reading  Demeter,  and  other  Poems 
(1889)  or  The  Death  of  (Enone,  Akbar's  Dream,  and  other  Poems 
(1892)  ;  for  at  the  last  he  writes  Crossing  the  Bar  ;  and  already, 
at  the  age  of  eighty,  he  has  celebrated  The  Progress  of  Spring, 
exclaiming  that 

The  groundflame  of  the  crocus  breaks  the  mould. 

The  truth  about  Tennyson's  contemporary  reputation1  and 
its  fortunes,  and  about  his  relations  to  the  critics,  has  only 
lately  been  cleared  up.  He  had  to  struggle  for  his  fame,  not 
only  in  the  Thirties  but  in  the  Forties,  longer  and  harder  than 
had  been  supposed.  The  best  judges  saw  that  it  was  due,  but 
they  were  seldom  the  professional  critics.  The  public,  however, 
knew  better  than  the  reviewers,  and  bought  the  books.  After 
1850  and  till  his  death  Tennyson  had  the  suffrages  of  all,  except 
of  one  or  two  of  those  very  judges,  Carlyle  and  Fitzgerald, 
who  repined  at  his  lack  of  a  '  subject,'  and  of  Taine,  whose 
chapter  on  Tennyson  in  his  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  anglaise, 
though  acute  and  salutary,  is  deformed  by  a  preconception  of 
the  poet's  character.  Respecting  Tennyson's  attitude  to  his 
critics,  it  is  most  unsafe  to  say,  as  was  long  said,  that  he 
altered  his  text  at  their  instance  ;  but  it  is  true  that  he  took 
their  censures  bitterly,  and  was  stung,  so  it  is  reported,  when 
'  Apollodorus  says  that  I  am  not  a  great  poet.'  Apollodorus, 
at  times,  even  seems  to  have  silenced  the  poet,  as  well  as  dis- 
couraging him.  But  in  the  long  run  Tennyson  went  his  own 
way,  and  got  out,  we  may  think,  all  that  was  in  him.  Before 
trying  to  see,  as  a  whole,  what  he  really  achieved,  it  is  well, 
without  strictly  heeding  dates,  to  review  his  work  under  its 
natural  species,  and  to  begin  with  his  best. 


Ill 

The  antique,  after  its  long  partial  eclipse  during  the  age  of 
prose,  had  come  more  and  more — and  this  largely  through  the 
influence  of  Milton  transmitting  it — to  inspire  the  age  of 
romance.  And  the  antique,  more  and  more,  had  come  to 
mean  the  best  Greek  poetry — Homer,  and  iEschylus,  and  the 
anthology,  and  the  idylls,  and  the  odes.  Hyperion,  Hellas,  the 
writings  of  Landor,  show  this  inspiration  at  work.  In  Tennyson 
it  takes  new  life  ;   it  produces  The  Lotos-Eaters,  and  Ulysses 


33G  TENNYSON 

nine  years  later  ;  and  then,  more  than  forty  years  after  that, 
it  produces  Tiresias,  so  fresh  is  the  old  age  of  the  poet.  The 
spirit  of  Greek  verse  and  the  lesson  of  its  art  must  have  sunk 
far  into  a  man,  must  have  been  one  of  the  deep  things  in  his 
life,  to  bear  such  fruit  !  And  Tennyson's  Hellenics — if  we  may 
use  the  term  coined  by  Landor,  whose  own  volume  thus  entitled 
appeared  in  1846,  and  if,  by  a  natural  extension,  we  may  apply 
it  also  to  poems  founded  on  Lucretius,  Catullus,  and  Virgil, 
who  were  themselves  inspired  by  Greece — Tennyson's  Hellenics, 
then,  along  with  some  of  his  lyrics,  include  some  of  his  most 
perfect  and  permanent  work,  and  they  remain,  with  Samson 
Agonistes  and  Prometheus  Unbound,  among  the  chief  tributes  in 
our  language  to  the  power  of  the  antique. 

This  is  a  good  deal  to  say  ;  and  some  distinctions  must  be 
made .  Ulysses  and  Tiresias  are  in  the  form  on  which  Tennyson 
finally  settled,  not  only  for  his  classical,  but  for  other  highly 
characteristic  pieces  :  it  is  the  dramatic  monologue,  of  moderate 
length,  and  written  in  a  blank  verse  of  which  the  marks  are 
generally  grandeur  and  composure — the  composure  not  of 
detachment  or  indifference  but  of  experience.  No  one  doubts 
that  he  was  right,  master  of  blank  verse  as  he  was,  to  use  it  here, 
for  nothing  else  could  equally  convey  those  qualities  ;  or,  again, 
that  he  did  well  in  settling  on  the  monologue  form,  with  all  its 
difficulties.  But  he  did  not  come  to  it  at  once  ;  and  whilst 
on  the  way  to  it  he  wrote  things  of  great  and  acknowledged 
beauty,  where  that  form  is  not  yet  fully  disengaged.  The 
Lotos -Eaters  opens  with  the  Spenserian  stanzas  founded  on 
Homer's  picture  of  the  lotos  ;  but  most  of  it  is  choric  ode,  in 
irregular  measures  :  a  monologue  certainly,  but  a  lyrical  one, 
chanted  by  the  sailors  in  unison,  and  therefore  expressive  of  a 
mood,  and  not  like  Ulysses  of  a  character.  The  poem  in  its 
earliest  form  wanted  the  long  ringing  close  on  the  life  of  the 
Lucretian  gods,  which  enforces  the  note  of  grandeur  ;  but 
from  the  first  that  note  is  heard — Why  should  we  toil  alone  ? — and 
it  springs  up  from  and  begins  to  overpower  the  original  strain 
of  languor  and  fatal  delightful  ease.  Still  The  Lotos-Eaters  is 
a  lyric  ;  and  OS  none  is  an  idyll,  keeping  the  refrain  which  the 
Sicilians,  and  Milton  in  his  Epitaphium  Damonis,  had  used  so 
well.  And  though  blank  verse  is  the  medium,  and  though  it  is 
mostly  narrative  and  descriptive,  (Enone  is  not  yet  the  true 
dramatic  monologue,  where  the  story  and  situation  are  not 
related  but  are  made  clear  by  the  way  ;  and  where  nothing 
external  happens,  or  at  least  need  happen,  for  the  movement 
is  purely  one  of  thought  and  emotion.     This  kind  of  poem  may 


HEROIC  STYLE  :    BLANK  VERSE  337 

be  thought  of  as  a  single,  central  speech  taken  out  of  an  epic  or 
a  Greek  play — which  however  does  not  exist.  This  is  true  of 
Tennyson's  usage,  not  of  Browning's  ;  for  My  Last  Duchess 
and  TJie  Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb  have  the  air  of  coming  out  of 
an  Elizabethan  or  modern  drama,  not  of  a  Greek  one  ;  the 
pattern  of  all  such  compositions  being  found  in  the  soliloquies 
of  Hamlet.  Tennyson,  too,  approaches  that  manner  in  works 
like  St.  Simeon  Stylites,  but  not  in  his  classical  pieces. 

In  Tithonus,  another  product  of  the  Thirties,  the  form  is  fully 
attained.  It  is  a  speech,  addressed  to  Eos,  a  muta  persona,  who 
nevertheless  is  made  visible  in  her  tender  gestures,  like  some 
figure  in  the  Street  of  Tombs.  The  blank  verse  is  there,  not 
yet  in  all  its  nerve,  but  in  all  its  grace  ;  the  poem  is  a  triumph 
of  grace  and  pathos.  The  peculiar  desiderium,  bred  of  the 
'  cruel  immortality  '  under  which  Tithonus  suffers,  is  enforced 
by  the  recurrence  of  certain  words  which  give  the  dominant 
mood  :  mist,  and  silver,  and  glimmering,  and  tears,  and  beauty, 
and  shadow.  Here  can  still  be  traced  the  struggle,  or  rather 
now  the  fusion,  between  Tennyson's  instinct  for  complexity 
and  his  instinct  for  simplicity  ;  perhaps  the  former  rules.  But 
in  Ulysses  the  latter  rules  ;  the  heroic  style  has  come,  in  its 
plainness  and  strength.  It  has  come,  in  part,  from  Dante,  who 
supplies  the  story,  not  to  be  found  in  Homer,  of  the  last  adven- 
ture of  Ulysses,  and  whose  treatment  may  be  called,  in  the 
largest  and  truest  sense,  classical.  Tennyson  catches  his 
strain  in  a  line  like 

And  see  the  great  Achilles,  whom  we  knew. 

But  there  is  also  Tennyson's  own,  his  spontaneous  intricacy  of 
musical  metaphor  : 

Yet  all  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro' 

Gleams  that  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 

For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move  ; 

and  there  his  own  delight  in  full,  cunning  vowelling  : 

There  gloom  the  dark  broad  seas. 

In  Ulysses  the  poetical  conception  has  a  more  universal 
application  than  that  of  Tithonus  ;  the  symbolism  is  latent, 
but  we  can  find  it  without  violence.  The  conception  of 
following  knowledge,  at  any  cost,  beyond  the  traditional  pillars 
into  dangerous  waters,  appealed  as  much  to  the  age  of  Tenny- 
son and  Darwin  as  it  had  done  to  that  of  Bruno  and  Bacon. 
The  poem  was  written,  said  the  author,  '  soon  after  Arthur 
Hallam's  death,  and  gave  my  feeling  about  the  need  of  going 
VOL.  I.  Y 


338  TENNYSON 

forward  and  braving  the  struggle  of  life  perhaps  more  simply 
than  anything  in  In  Memoriam.'  In  Tiresias,  again,  the  con- 
ception is  large  and  adequate,  and  strikes  beyond  the  story 
itself  ;  it  is  the  doom  of  the  seer,  who  lives  to  see  his  disregarded 
forebodings  come  true.  Here,  on  the  whole,  elaboration  rules 
once  more.  Tiresias  is  a  good  late  example  of  Tennyson's 
complex  and  symphonious  verse,  which  recalls  Milton  not  in  its 
actual  cast,  but  in  its  comparable  mastery  of  the  steeds  of 
Rhythm  and  Language — in  its  charioteering  power.  The 
'  diffuse  and  opulent  end,'  which  the  poet  supposes  his  friend 
FitzGerald  to  criticise,  is  not  diffuse  at  all,  though  it  is  opulent  ; 
and  here  it  is,  though  I  shall  not  often  venture  to  quote  Tenny- 
son at  length,  as  if  he  were  unfamiliar  :  and  let  it  be  said  that 
these  qualities  do  not  vanish  in  Demeter  and  Persephone  or  in 
The  Death  of  (Enone,  the  works  of  his  age  : 

But  for  me, 
I  would  that  I  were  gather'd  to  my  rest, 
And  mingled  with  the  famous  kings  of  old, 
On  whom  about  their  ocean-islets  flash 
The  faces  of  the  Gods — the  wise  man's  word, 
Here  trampled  by  the  populace  underfoot, 
There  crown'd  with  worship — and  these  eyes  will  find 
The  men  I  knew,  and  watch  the  chariot  whirl 
About  the  goal  again,  and  hunters  race 
The  shadowy  lion,  and  the  warrior-kings, 
In  height  and  prowess  more  than  human,  strive 
Again  for  glory,  while  the  golden  lyre 
Is  ever  sounding  in  heroic  ears 
Heroic  hymns,  and  every  way  the  vales 
Wind,  clouded  with  the  -grateful  incense-fume 
Of  those  who  mix  all  odour  to  the  Gods 
On  one  far  height  in  one  far-shining  fire. 

Except  for  Lucretius,  the  other  classical  pieces  are  lyrics, 
of  the  sort  in  which  poets  with  a  brooding,  tenacious  type  of 
memory  excel.  Gray  is  a  brother  in  this  craft  ;  and  its  father, 
Virgil,  Tennyson  honours  in  his  anniversary  lines  '  written 
at  the  request  of  the  Mantuans.'  He  weaves  names,  and 
images,  and  echoes,  many  of  them  from  the  Sixth  iEneid,  into 
a  majestic  harmony  :  the  '  golden  branch  amid  the  shadows,' 
the  '  Universal  Mind,'  the  destiny  of  Rome,  now  at  last  (in 
1870)  the  '  Rome  of  freemen.'  Had  Tennyson  translated 
Virgil,  as  so  often  has  been  wished,  he  might  have  used  the  long 
trochaic  metre  of  this  poem,  which  has  no  little  of  the  '  ocean- 
roll  of  rhythm  '  required.  The  English  hexameter  he  derided. 
The  lines  To  Virgil,  no  doubt,  are  the  flower  of  Tennyson's 
commemorative    lyric,    perhaps    of    all    his    lyric.    His    nine 


ENGLISH  IDYLLS— VARIOUS  STYLES  339 

monorhymes  on  Catullus,  Fraier  Ave  atque  Vale,  are  akin  to 
them ;  and,  what  is  not  easy,  he  manages  to  unite  tenderness 
with  resonance.  The  timbrel-tune  of  the  Attis  echoes  in  the 
galliambics  of  Boadicea,1  as  it  was  soon  to  do,  also  worthily, 
in  the  Phaethon  of  George  Meredith.  The  alcaics  on  Milton  are 
moulded  on  the  Greek,  not  on  the  Latin  type,  and  aim  at  its 
'  freer  and  lighter  movement.'  They  too  are  distilled,  and  there 
is  much  of  Milton  in  them  ;  but  why  does  the  poet  prefer  the 
prettiness  of  a  formal  Eden  to  the  '  roar  of  an  angel  onset  '  ? 
Of  the  two  translations  from  Homer  into  blank  verse,  the 
earlier,  '  So  Hector  spake,'  is  the  more  magnificent,  but 
Achilles  over  the  Trench  is  nearer  to  Homer  in  its  cast  of 
language  ;  and  its  style  would  have  held  out  better  for  a  pro- 
longed experiment.  On  Tennyson's  general  knowledge  and 
appropriation  of  the  classics  much  has  been  written  ;  enough  to 
say  here  that,  like  Milton,  he  does  not  simply  insert  but  incor- 
porates his  endless  borrowings.  In  the  last  year  of  his  life  he 
'  enlarged  for  some  time  upon  the  greatness  of  Homer,  quoting 
many  lines  from  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey.' 


IV 

The  '  English  idyll,'  already  written  by  Southey  and  Words- 
worth, was  an  attempt  to  extend  the  lower  limits  of  poetry  ;  to 
see  how  near,  without  ceasing  to  be  poetry,  verse  could  approach 
in  tone  to  the  prose  tale  of  humble  life.  Southey 's  Hannah  is 
discouraging  ;  but  Wordsworth  in  his  Michael  justifies  the 
experiment,  as  well  as  the  use  of  blank  verse  in  such  a  cause. 
Blank  verse,  certainly,  is  the  metre  in  which  prose  can  most 
cheaply  pretend  to  be  something  not  itself.  The  result  is  easy 
to  detect  when  the  subject  is  plainly  poor  or  sterile,  and  the 
blank  verse  sinks  accordingly  ;  but  is  not  so  easy  when  the 
verse  keeps  its  dignity,  and  reacts  on  the  language,  and  raises 
the  language  above  any  pitch  of  feeling  that  can  be  warranted 
by  the  subject.  The  point  of  danger  is  approached  in  The 
Brothers  by  Wordsworth,  but  is  just  escaped  ;  in  a  tale  like  the 
Honor  Neale  (1838)  of  Archbishop  Trench,  the  line  is  passed  and 
the  effect  is  bathos  and  pastiche.  What,  then,  of  Dora,  Edwin 
Morris,  and  Walking  to  the  Mill  ?  Wordsworth  praised  Dora, 
and  Matthew  Arnold  charged  it  with  false  simplicity.  The 
story,  taken  from  Miss  Mitford's  Tale  of  Dora  Cresswell  in  Our 
Village,  is  not  unfitted  for  poetry.  Tennyson,  in  telling  it,  puts 
a  constraint  on  his  natural  style  and  seeks  to  be  Words worthian 
and  biblical.     The  simplicity  is  not  spurious  ;   the  force  of  the 


340  TENNYSON 

story  prevents  that  risk.  What  is  wrong  with  Dora  is  that 
part  of  it  is  simply  iambic  prose.  The  use  of  verse  is  not  fully 
justified.  Such  an  effect  may  serve  very  well  when  the  tone 
is  light,  as  it  is  in  the  description  of  the  pie  in  Audley  Court  or  of 
the  pack  of  cards  in  the  Prelude  ;  but  then  Dora  is  wholly 
serious.  Verse  on  the  lowest  ledge  of  diction  is  agreeable 
enough,  when  it  slips  into  satire  like  that  on 

Slight  Sir  Robert  with  his  watery  smile 
And  educated  whisker, 

or  when  it  is  interspersed  with  Termysonian  painting — 

While  the  prime  swallow  dips  his  wing,  or  then 

While  the  gold-lily  blows,  and  overhead 

The  light  cloud  smoulders  on  the  summer  crag. 

The  minimum  style,  as  we  may  call  it,  is  like  this,  when  the 
tone  is  meant  to  be  serious  : 

So  left  the  place,  left  Edwin,  nor  have  seen 
Him  since,  nor  heard  of  her,  nor  cared  to  hear. 

These  are  three  ways  of  writing  ;  and  if  we  add  a  fourth,  in 
which  Tennyson  wrote  reams,  but  in  which  he  is  never  safe,  the 
declamatory-passionate,  like  this — 

I  choked.     Again  they  shriek'd  the  burthen — '  Him  ! ' 
Again  with  hands  of  wild  rejection  '  Go  ! 
Girl,  get  you  in  !  ' — 

— if  we  put  all  these  together,  with  a  touch  of  the  speculative, 
or  arguing  style,  thrown  in,  we  are  in  sight  of  the  '  medley  '  of 
The  Princess,  and  of  some  of  the  elements  out  of  which  Enoch 
Arden,  Aylmer's  Field,  and  the  rest  are  compounded.  Here, 
as  ever,  the  technique  must  not  be  judged  absolutely  or  in  the 
air,  but  in  its  relation  to  the  subject  ;  and  in  general,  through- 
out Tennyson,  we  find  that  in  his  declamatory  or  spasmodic 
writing  the  technique  is  apt  to  get  above  the  subject  ;  for  when 
the  subject  is  inadequate  the  poet  instinctively  brandishes  his 
rhetorical  flail  to  sweep  us  off  our  feet.  This  drawback  is  felt 
most  keenly  in  his  blank  verse.  But  then  he  saves  himself 
when  the  tirades  are  truly  dramatic  in  character  ;  as  they  are 
in  Maud,  and  as  they  are  in  Locksley  Hall :  a  poem  which  is  not 
only  glorious  in  its  cadence  and  its  dreary  landscape,  but  is  also 
very  frank  and  youthful,  and  engaging  even  in  its  absurdities  ; 
unlike  that  ineffective  diatribe,  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After, 
where  little  but  the  cadence  is  left. 

Some  of  these  observations  apply  to  Enoch  Arden,  but  there 
it  is  the  treatment  and  the  sentiment  that  inspire  misgiving. 


THE  PRINCESS  341 

The  tale  as  it  is  told  is  too  good  to  be  true.  The  old  woman 
who  called  it  '  that  other  beautiful  tract '  hit  the  mark.  Every 
one  is  noble,  no  one  is  angry.  There  is  not  much  real  pulse  in  the 
poem,  except,  be  it  freely  said,  in  the  culminating  passage, 
'  Now  when  the  dead  man  came  to  life.  .  .  .'  But  the  little 
old  water-colour  village  at  the  outset,  and  the  tropical  calenture 
in  the  middle,  are  painted  faultlessly.  The  '  costly  funeral ' 
of  Enoch  has  been  censured  as  tasteless  ;  rather,  it  is  out  of 
keeping,  which  it  would  not  have  been  had  Crabbe  told  the 
story,  as  we  may  wish  that  he  had  done.  The  Enoch  Arden 
volume  at  first  bore  the  title  Idylls  of  the  Hearth,  which  ex- 
presses its  purpose  well  enough. 

The  shot  silk  fabric  of  The  Princess  is  a  delightful  thing  to 
hold  up  and  turn  over  in  various  lights,  in  spite  of  the  very 
considerable  hole  in  the  middle  of  it  ;  by  which  I  mean  the 
confusion  in  the  main  idea.  Well  if  Tennyson  had  kept  the 
tale  on  the  plane  of  high  serious  comedy,  a  kind  of  inverse  of 
Love's  Labour 's  Lost ;  if  he  had  simply  shown  the  women 
trying  to  rule  out  men  from  the  scheme  of  things  and  defeated 
by  nature,  and  the  infant  (whom  Sydney  Smith  had  said  there 
was  no  fear  of  a  woman  '  deserting  for  a  quadratic  equation  ') 
playing  its  part  in  the  story  and  the  lyrics.  The  jest  would 
then  have  lain  in  nature  using  so  unimpressive  an  instrument 
as  the  Prince.  As  it  is,  the  irony  is  on  the  wrong  edge,  for 
there  must  needs  be  a  thesis,  and  that  with  the  Prince  for  its 
expounder.  The  well-known  speech,  '  For  woman  is  not  un- 
developt  man,'  contains  some  of  the  heaviest  lines  Tennyson 
ever  published  ;  but  it  is  amiss  rather  in  what  it  omits,  yet 
seems  to  imply,  than  in  what  it  says.  The  type  of  feminine 
excellence  that  it  exalts  does  not  leave  much  room  for  Emilia 
Belloni,  or  for  Volumnia,  or  for  George  Sand.  Tennyson 
judges  more  by  preconception  and  theory  than  by  life  and  the 
event  of  what  women  may  do  and  hope  to  do  if  they  are  given 
free  play.  That  remains  to  be  seen.  Nor  did  we  need  to  be 
told  what  it  is  they  can  do  which  we  cannot  do  at  all,  or  that 
they  always  will  and  ought  to  do  it. 

This  said,  we  can  enjoy  The  Princess  more  freely.  It  was 
much  revised  and  improved  in  successive  editions.1-  The 
insertion  of  the  rhymed  lyrics  in  the  third  (1850)  drew  the  poem 
together  ;  that  of  the  '  weird  seizures,'  or  trances,  of  the  Prince, 
in  the  fourth  (1851)  has  been  objected  to  as  detracting  from  his 
consequence  ;  but  then  he  had  little  enough  consequence 
already,  and  in  an  avowed  medley  one  curious  extra  strand  can 
do  no  harm.    Topical  allusions  to  the  '  year  of  revolutions  ' 


342  TENNYSON 

are  also  put  in.  But  the  old  admirable  things  all  remained  ; 
the  country  house,  the  women's  '  Academe,'  the  pictures,  the 
lectures,  the  proctors,  the  daughters  of  the  plough,  the 
masquerade,  the  war.  The  style  is  precisely  described  by  the 
supposed  narrator,  as  lying  in  '  a  strange  diagonal '  between 
what  the  men  wanted,  the  '  mock-heroic  gigantesque,'  and  the 
'  true -sublime,'  desired  by  the  women.  For  much  of  the 
time  Tennyson  is  amusing  himself  over  his  own  technique, 
whilst  in  the  act  of  extending  it,  by  frolics  and  experiments 
with  his  metre,  but  still  more  by  playfully  exaggerating  one  of 
his  own  faults,  which  is  to  deal  in  images  rather  beyond  the 
occasion  ;  as  in  the  description  of  the  lady  '  Head,' 

Fixt  like  a  beacon-tower  above  the  waves 
Of  tempest,  when  the  crimson-rolling  eye 
({lares  ruin,  and  the  wild  birds  on  the  light 
Dash  themselves  dead. 

Altogether  The  Princess  is  distinguished,  in  Jeremy  Taylor's 
words,  by  '  variety  and  load,  and  cost,  and  curiosity.' 


From  The  Two  Voices  to  The  Ancient  Sage,  Tennyson  is  never 
long  unoccupied  with  speculative  verse — with  what  has  been 
called  'the  poetry  of  ideas,'  argumentative,  or  rhetorical,  or 
eloquent,  or  imaginative.  He  gave  it  new  resources,  he  found 
a  new  style  for  it,  he  put,  as  we  say,  his  weight  into  it.  He 
inherits  it,  no  doubt,  from  Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  but  his 
methods  are  not  theirs.  The  varieties  of  this  kind  of  poetry  are 
well  seen  in  In  Memoriam  ;  but  Tennyson's  first  thesis  in  verse 
is  found  in  The  Two  Voices.  It  is  direct  arguing,  by  plea  and 
counterplea — a  form  he  did  not  often  use.  The  skill  is  signal ; 
but  the  verse  drones,  and  the  end  becomes  an  anticlimax,  when 
the  too  quick  despairer  is  dissuaded  from  suicide,  strangely 
enough,  by  the  sight  of  the  citizen  family  (infant  and  all)  going 
to  church.  I  said  above  that  The  Palace  of  Art  has  '  a  blind 
alley  of  a  moral.'  For  the  temper  of  artistic  detachment  and 
self-sufficiency  there  described  is  a  purely  fictitious  one  ;  it 
represents  no  known  artist  or  theory  of  art  ;  it  is  more  like 
some  of  the  once  prevalent  caricatures  of  Goethe.  A  mind, 
moreover,  that  could  admire  '  Plato  the  wise  '  and  '  world- 
worn  Dante  '  is  not  likely  to  '  lose  sight  of  its  relation  to  man 
and  God,'  as  Spedding  expressed  it,  altogether.  The  picture- 
gallery  is  in  Tennyson's  best  manner,  and  happily  its  value 
does  not  depend  on  that  of  the  thesis. 


POETRY  OF  IDEAS— VARIOUS  STYLES  343 

In  The  Vision  of  Sin  the  ruling  idea,  namely  that  satiety 
brings  in  its  train  not  only  impotence  but  malice,  is  by  no  means 
commonplace.  The  Maenad  dance  is  magnificent,  and  we  could 
wish  that  Tennyson  had  let  himself  go  in  this  direction  oftener. 
The  old  rake's  lyric  that  follows  suffers  from  the  hammering, 
ranting  vein  into  which  the  poet  was  so  easily  to  fall.  In  the 
finale,  the  bronze -like  ringing  couplets  are  worthy  of  a  more 
satisfactory  conception.  For  the  drift  is  left  obscure  at  the 
last,  and  Tennyson's  plea  that  '  the  power  of  explaining  such 
concentrated  expressions  of  the  imagination  is  very  different 
from  that  of  writing  them  '  would  not  have  commended  itself, 
we  may  think,  to  Dante,  whose  underlying  thought,  however 
difficult,  is  always  solid  and  presentable. 

None  the  less,  all  these  pieces  disclose  a  new  mastery,  almost 
a  new  instrument  ;  they  do  not  leave  the  poetry  of  ideas  where 
they  found  it  ;  or  at  least  they  take  it  back  to  the  great  age,  the 
age  of  the  Four  Hymns  and  of  Nosce  Teipsum  : 

Much  more,  if  first  I  floated  free, 
As  naked  essence,  must  I  be 
Incompetent  of  memory : 

For  memory  dealing  but  with  time, 
And  he  with  matter,  could  she  climb 
Beyond  her  own  material  prime  ? 

That  is  pure  arguing,  most  deftly  done  ;  and  the  same  gift  is 
seen  in  the  epigram  of  moral  analysis,  for  nothing  could  be 
much  conciser  than  this  : 

Then  some  one  spake :    '  Behold  !   it  was  a  crime 
Of  sense  avenged  by  sense  that  wore  with  time.' 
Another  said  :    '  The  crime  of  sense  became 
The  crime  of  malice,  and  is  equal  blame.' 

But  the  real,  distinctive  note  of  Tennyson's  philosophic  verse  is 
heard  when  he  utters  some  prophetic  vision,  as  in  '  Love  thou 
thy  land  '  and  the  companion  pieces  that  read  like  splinters  of 
In  Memoriam  : 

Ev'n  now  we  hear  with  inward  strife 

A  motion  toiling  in  the  gloom — 

The  Spirit  of  the  years  to  come 
Yearning  to  mix  himself  with  Life. 

This  peculiar  finish  and  concision,  applied  to  subtle  ideas,  is 
not  easily  to  be  found  in  our  poetry  before  Tennyson  ;  and  of 
these  qualities  In  Memoriam  is  full.  The  fines  on  James 
Spedding's  brother  (To  J.  S.)  have  not  quite  this  cast  ;    and 


344  TENNYSON 

they  are  more  simple  and  direct  than  most  of  the  great  elegy 
itself,  and  are  not  in  its  measure. 

Verlaine  told  me  that  he  had  tried  to  translate  In  Memoriam,  but 
could  uot,  because  Tennyson  was  '  too  noble,  too  anglais,  and  when 
he  should  have  been  broken-hearted  had  many  reminiscences.' 

So  records  a  living  poet  ;  *  and  Charlotte  Bronte  had  made 
a  similar  complaint  against  this  '  rhymed,  and  printed,  and 
measured  monument  of  grief.'  There  is  really  nothing  in  it  ; 
it  is  a  complaint  that  In  Memoriam  is  neither  a  brief  lyric 
nor  yet  a  tragical,  Shakespearian  soliloquy.  Tennyson  was 
broken-hearted  ;  in  our  '  reminiscence,'  even  if  not  otherwise, 
the  dead  live  ;  and,  whatever  the  speculative  value  of  the  poem, 
it  records  a  great  friendship.  In  Memoriam  is  more  impressive 
than  anything  Tennyson  wrote  on  the  love  of  women.  There 
is  some  direct  arguing  in  it  ;  and  if  we  judge  this  to  be,  properly 
speaking,  superfluous,  since  the  final  consolation  and  convic- 
tion rest  not  on  reasoning  at  all,  but  on  a  mystical  intuition 
which  is  good  for  those  who  have  it  and  meaningless  for  others, 
still  the  reasoning  is  dramatically  in  place,  for  it  shows  the 
working  of  the  poet's  mind  before  the  intuition  came.  In 
Memoriam  contains  some  of  his  best,  and  some  of  his  most 
dubious,  writing. 

Composed  at  intervals  over  long  years,  it  was  originally  no 
preconceived  whole,  nor  can  it  be  called  an  artistic  whole. 
The  poet  tries  to  make  it  such  by  arranging  the  numbers  in  an 
order  which  is  not  that  of  composition,  and  therefore  not  that 
of  the  moods  and  experiences  related.  Quite  possibly  the  same 
is  true  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  as  we  have  them.  In  both 
cases  the  result  falls  into  certain  internal  groups,  each  bound 
together  by  its  own  idea,  such  as  the  consolations  of  friendship  or 
the  vanity  of  fame.  But  the  different  members  of  each  group 
may  belong  to  different  times  and  occasions  ;  and  again,  the 
ordering  of  the  groups  themselves  may  be  part  of  the  after- 
thought. All  through  both  poems,  meditations  on  man  and 
the  world,  on  beauty  and  conduct,  and  on  the  power  of  thought 
by  its  own  energy  to  overcome  distance  or  death,  radiate  out 
from  the  main  theme,  the  friend's  affection.  The  comparison 
need  go  no  further.  But  the  separate  numbers,  long  or  short, 
of  In  Memoriam,  have  the  same  kind  of  unity  as  the  sonnets  in 
an  Elizabethan  series  ;  that  is,  they  are  mostly  detachable  and 
complete  poems,  yet  are  linked  more  or  less  closely  with  their 
neighbours,  so  that  the  whole  has  at  any  rate  the  semblance  of 
unity  ;  and  this  is  enhanced  by  the  unity  of  the  metre — by  the 


IN  MEMORIAM  345 

almost  irresistible  impression,  or  illusion,  of  a  single  atmosphere 
which  a  notable  and  powerful  metre  will  produce  in  spite  of 
great  diversity  or  even  disharmony  in  the  contents.  The  argu- 
ment and  evolution  of  In  Memoriam  are  intricate,  and  a  brief 
summary  will  be  unjust  to  it. 

At  first  the  poet  is  drowned  in  grief,  and  plays  with  it,  and 
makes  love  to  it,  as  if  wearily,  sinking  into  it  deliberately,  and 
pausing  to  cheat  himself  with  sombre  fancies.  He  follows  the 
voyage  of  the  ship  that  brought  his  dead  friend  back,  and  re- 
threads  the  course  of  the  friendship.  After  many  ebbs  and 
flows  of  feeling  he  finds  that  grief  is  a  true  possession  ;  and  he 
begins  to  found  a  kind  of  faith  upon  it.  He  finds  in  the  mystery 
of  life  itself,  and  in  that  of  love,  some  assurance  of  survival  ; 
failing  this,  life  itself  would  be  a  chaos.  Then  he  has  a  gleam  of 
hope  that  the  dead  may  care  for  us  ;  he  muses  on  the  possible 
nature  of  the  disembodied  soul,  and  on  how  far  it  may  remember 
its  earthly  affections.  He  revolts  against  the  idea  that  the 
soul,  after  death,  is  at  once  absorbed  in  the  Whole  ;  he  judges, 
as  a  matter  of  blind  faith,  that  evil  may  in  the  end  somehow 
generate  good,  in  spite  of  the  indifference  of  Nature  to  man 
~her  chief  product.  Then  follow  reflections  upon  the  value  and 
quality  -of  posthumous  fame,  which  Tennyson,  unlike  the 
Elizabethans,  but  like  Emily  Bronte,  holds  lightly.  At  last, 
in  the  dark  garden,  he  has  the  trance-like  'experience  in  which 
he  believes  that  he  communes  with  his  friend.  After  this  his 
love  grows  afresh,  and  widens  out  to  include  mankind,  whose 
hopes  and  future  occupy  him  to  the  calming  of  his  grief.  ^Love, 
now  universalised,  is  seen  to  be  the.  principle  of  human  progress. 
Man's  freewill,  and  the  outlook  of  the  race,  form  a  foundation 
for  hope.  The  epilogue,  on  the  marriage  of  the  poet's  sister,  is  in 
accord  with  these  aspirations  ;  the  whole  work  being,  as  he  > 
says,  '  a  kind  of  Diving  Commedia,  ending  in  happiness.'  > 

Thus  In  Memoriam  is  no  simple  elegy,  but,  like  Adonais,  is 
charged  with  the  poetry  of  ideas.  Its  power  lies,  however, 
less  in  playing  over  ideas  than  in  playing  with  the  logic  of 
feeling — in  the  analysis  of  grief  and  hope,  of  memory,  and 
vision  ;  neither  Milton  nor  Arnold  have  just  this  habit  of  mind. 
Tennyson  knows  that  he  does  not  know  what  he  feels  till  he  has 
shaped  it  into  finished  and  lucid  expression.  And  though 
some  of  In  Memoriam  is  condensed  to  the  point  of  darkness,  it 
is,  on  the  whole,  a  lucid  expression  of  obscure  feelings,  not  an 
obscure  expression  of  confused  thoughts.  Nor,  of  course,  is  it 
all  in  this  difficult  style.  The  simple  parts,  the  picture  of  the 
college  friendship  and  of  Hallam's  character,  are  only  touched 


346  TENNYSON 

with  monotony  by  the  metre  ;  and  the  sections  describing  the 
'  joyless  day,'  or  the  coming  of  spring,  are,  as  to  sound  and 
colour,  among  Tennyson's  triumphs. 

The  metre,  the  old  '  closed  '  short -line  quatrain,  used  by  Ben 
Jonson  and  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Tennyson  did  not 
borrow,  at  least  consciously,  from  those  authors.  It  has,  how- 
ever, an  inherent  ring  of  its  own,  as  we  see  by  comparing  them 
all,  and  we  may  add  Rossetti  afterwards — a  ring  which  persists, 
whosoever  may  use  it.  Tennyson,  no  doubt,  gives  it  most  of 
.  the  variety  of  which  it  is  capable  :  uses  it  for  a  kind  of  epigram, 
or  for  a  long  concerted  paragraph  taken  in  one  breath,  or  for 
dream -narrative  ;  keeps  it  usually  level  and  lineal,  but  on 
occasion  breaks  the  lines  or  runs  on  the  verses  ;  now  going 
sweetly,  now  mustering  all  the  shattering  sounds  that  he  can 
find.     Some  of  these  modulations  are  seen  in  No.  cvn.  : 

The  time  admits  not  flowers  or  leaves 

To  deck  the  banquet.     Fiercely  flies 

The  blast  of  North  and  East,  and  ice 
Makes  daggers  at  tho  sharpen'd  eaves, 

And  bristles  all  the  brakes  and  thorns 
To  yon  hard  crescent,  as  she  hangs 
Above  the  wood  which  grides  and  clangs 

Its  leafless  ribs  and  iron  horns 

Together,  in  the  drifts  that  pass 
To  darken  on  the  rolling  brine 
That  breaks  the  coast.     But  fetch  the  wine, 

Arrange  the  board  and  brim  the  glass;  .  .  . 

It  is  easy  to  find  the  sweet  and  fluent,  or  the  grave  and 
sententious,  numbers  in  contrast  to  this.  They  are,  indeed, 
everywhere. 

VI 

In  Memoriam,  the  chief  document  for  Tennyson's  religious 
faith,  is  also  typical  of  a  certain  phase  of  contemporary  opinion. 
It  shows,  on  one  side,  a„great  loosening  of  doctrinal  bonds  ;  it 
is  relatively  liberal ;  it  is  leagues  away  from,  it  makes  dead 
against,  that  hardening  of  dogma  which  was  the  aim  of  the 
first  High  Churchmen.  It  attempts  to  embody  poetically  some 
of  the  conclusions,  as  yet  but  half-divined,  of  the  science  of  the 
day.  At  the  same  time  Tennyson  forebodes  the  results  of 
what  has  since  been  called  '  naturalism  '  and  was  soon  (1869) 
to  be  called  'agnosticism.'  The  poem,  then,  resolves  itself 
into  a  plea  against  a  negative,  <n-  neutral,  view  on  the  question  of 
personal  immortality,  a  plea  founded  in  part  on  the  deliverance 
of  the  writer's  own  heart,  or  of  his  mystical  vision,  and  partly 


THE  NAMELESS  347 

on  the  conviction  that  all  the  hopes  of  mankind  are  staked  upon 
the  issue.  Without  thus  much  faith,  freed  though  it  be  from 
theological  terms,  he  sees  all  other  faith  in  the  future  of  the 
world  disappearing.  How  this  train  of  thought  appealed  to 
some  of  the  keener  minds  may  be  seen  from  the  letter  of  Henry 
Sidgwick  printed  in  the  Memoir  of  Tennyson,  and  from  the 
conclusion  of  his  Methods  of  Ethics  (1874,  see  Chap.  iv.  ante). 
The  recorded  conversations  of  Tyndall  and  others  with  the 
poet  throw  light  on  these  debates.  ' 

Tennyson,  then,  and  those  who  went  with  him,  by  no  means 
represent  the  '  extreme  right  '  among  believers,  but  rather  a 
kind  of  '  right  centre,'  which  accepts  a  good  many  of  the  new 
ideas,  but  remains  vehemently  conservative  nevertheless. 
Our  record  (Chs.  in.  and  iv.)  of  those  who  sat  more  to  the  '  left,5 
such  as  Mill,.  Huxley,  and  Leslie  Stephen,  has  already  dis- 
closed another  point  of  view,  which  will  appear  again  in  George 
Eliot.  It  is  needless  to  describe  it  again  ;  but  Tennyson  did 
not  study,  or  did  not  grasp,  at  least  certainly  never  states,  the 
full  counterplea  as  put  forward  by  his  own  contemporaries .  But 
he  has  his  place,  and  a  prominent  one,  in  the  protest  against 
the  drift  of  naturalism  ;  with  Browning,  he  stands  for  the 
protest  of  poetry  against  it.  One  poet,  however,  "  Master 
Swinburne/  as  Tennyson  was  heard  to  call  him,  was  to  express 
in  a  single  piece,  The  Pilgrims  (1871),  an  ideal  of  progress, 
achieved  through  union  in  self-sacrifice  :  an  ideal  which  seemed 
still  to  remain  all  the  clearer  for  mankind  after  it  had  lost,  or 
had  escaped  from,  the  ancient  faiths. 

Tennyson  rang  the  changes  on  the  ideas  of  In  Memoriam 
from  time  to  time  afterwards.  His  obscurest  lines,  The  Higher 
Pantheism,  seem  to  identify  the  outer  world  with  deity,  and  to 
say  that  the  spirit  of  man  is  only  kept  by  its  own  blindness  from 
peeing  that  identity,  but  that  even  this  blindness  may  be  got 
over  in  certain  hours  of  vision.  The  reference  may  be  to 
the  personal  experience  *  which  is  related  by  the  poet  both  in 
prose  and  in  the  verse  of  The  Ancient  Sage,  and  which  he  could 
invite  by 

revolving  in  myself 
The  word  that  is  the  symbol  of  myself — 

that  is,  his  own  name  ;  and  then 

The  mortal  limit  of  the  Self  was  loosed. 
And  past  into  the  Nameless,  as  a  cloud 
Melts  into  Heaven. 

The  '  Nameless,'  the  source  of  power  and  life,  and  the  quest  of 


348  TENNYSON 

vision,  is  not  spoken  of  by  the  sage  as  having  personality  or 
consciousness  ;  it  has  no  predicates,  or  it  has  all,  according  as 
we  state  the  matter  ;  and  so  far  it  resembles  Herbert  Spencer's 
ultimate  reality,  the  '  Unknowable,'  with  the  salient  difference 
that  Tennyson  thinks  that  it  can,  at  moments,  be  really  known. 
Whether  this  conception  has  a  purely  psychological  interest, 
or  has  also  a  speculative  value,  is  a  further  question.  Tennyson 
manages  to  connect  it  with  the  moral  counsel  of  the  sage  to  the 
young  pessimist  who  writes  desperate  (though  excellent)  lyrics, 
and  also  with  his  own  faith  in  some  kind  of  posthumous  sur- 
vival. The  counsels  themselves  are  obvious  ones,  put  into 
sonorous  language  ;  the  young  man  is  bidden  not  to  dress 
finely,  not  to 

fold 
Thy  presence  in  the  silk  of  sumptuous  looms, 

as  though  to  do  so  were  heinous.  The  poem  has  been  much 
admired,  and  is  highly  wrought,  but  has  not  much  substance  in 
it  save  for  the  description  of  the  trance.  In  fact,  we  can  say 
once  more  that  Tennyson  is  sounder  and  more  truly  poetical 
the  more  he  slips  back  from  metaphysics  into  psychology  or 
pathology  ;  and  we  can  pass  to  the  dramatic  monologues  which 
best  show  his  power  in  that  region. 

VII 

These  are  linked  with  his  classical  and  also  with  his  specula- 
tive poetry  by  Lucretius,  the  work  in  which  he  comes  nearest 
the  sublime,  though  it  is  the  vehement  sublime  of  Macbeth 
or  Othello  and  not  the  controlled  sublime  of  Milton.  Many  a 
strand  of  the  De  Rerum  Natura  is  woven  into  it,  in  Tennyson's 
way,  including  certain  passages  betraying  suppressed  strain  and 
fever,  which  do  not  indeed  give  the  tone  to  the  whole  work  but 
which  justify  the  modern  poet's  treatment  ;  nor  does  scholar- 
ship altogether  dismiss  the  legend  as  to  the  cause  of  Lucretius's 
death.  Thus  the  disorder  of  images  in  the  poem  is  all  in  keep- 
ing, and  most  of  them  are  suggested  by  something  in  the 
original.  The  jostling  of  atoms  and  gods,  of  the  Oread  and  the 
Hetairai,  in  the  mind  of  the  sick  man  is  part  of  his  malady  ; 
and  the  nobly  changeful  blank  verse  reflects  and  harmonises 
the  fluctuations  between  beauty  and  discord.  St.  Simeon 
Stylites,  an  earlier  work  more  in  Browning's  fashion,  is  also  an 
intense  and  sustained  realisation  of  the  subject  ;  but  so  fierce, 
and  here  so  unvaried,  is  the  tension,  that  the  poem  at  last 
begins  to  deaden  itself.    And  over  the  admired  Bizpah,  founded 


MAUD  349 

though  it  be  upon  a  fact,1  and  great  as  is  its  energy  a  similar 
doubt  arises  ;  for  it  runs  off  into  the  clattering  passionate 
rhetoric  that  was  Tennyson's  weakness,  and  it  does  not  suggest 
the  natural  speech  of  self -portrayal. 

But  in  Maud,  where  the  pathological  soliloquy  is  tested 
hardest  and  longest,  the  rhetoric,  when  it  comes,  is  really  in 
keeping  and  essential  to  the  speaker's  character.  The  public, 
no  doubt,  forgot  that  the  speaker  was  not  the  poet  ;  but  there 
was  something  in  its  shrewd  suspicion  that  the  poet  was  often 
the  speaker's  accomplice.  Certainly  Tennyson  could  write, 
on  his  own  account,  very  much  like  the  hero  of  Maud,  especially 
in  his  later  works  like  Vastness.  But  a  work  of  art  must  be 
judged  as  it  stands,  and  all  this  does  not  really  tell  against 
Maud,  of  which  Tennyson  exactly  describes  the  construction 
when  he  says  that  '  different  phases  of  passion  in  one  person 
take  the  place  of  different  characters.'  The  story  unfolds 
itself  in  a  string  of  lyrics,  each  of  them  being  a  more  or  less 
independent  poem,  and  each  introducing  a  new  moment  in  the 
situation,  with  its  special  mood,  which  is  embodied  in  the  metre. 
The  return  of  the  metre  reannounces  the  mood.  Slow  sane 
iambs,  hectic  anapaests,  joyous  trochees,  and  many  birdlike 
or  dirgelike  short  measures,  form,  in  their  succession  and  inter- 
woven recurrence,  a  complete  musical  fabric  ;  one  extreme  being 
seen  in  '  Go  not,  happy  day  '  and  in  the  famous  song  of  the 
rooks  calling,  the  other  in  the  long-breathed  appeal,  climbing 
and  falling  through  a  sentence  of  fourteen  plangent  lines,  to 
the  '  Cold  and  clear-cut  face.'  A  full  study  of  the  prosody  of 
Maud,  considered  as  an  index  of  emotion,  might  be  the  quickest' 
way  to  the  heart  of  the  poem.  The  actual  facts  related,  which 
are  sometimes  confusing,  are  cleared  up  by  the  notes,  by  no 
means  superfluous,  which  the  poet  added. 

The  speaker  is  a  decadent,  a  kind  of  Hamlet  without  the  brains, 
and  Tennyson  never  dramatised  any  personage  so  clearly.  The 
language  is  that  of  an  abnormal  but  actual  man,  and  not  the 
wonderfully  patterned  gauze  of  words  that  screens  the  Lancelots 
and  Arthurs  off  from  us.  The  novelists  had  essayed  the  speech 
of  madness  or  distraction,  sometimes  with  success,  as  in  Hogg's 
Confessions  of  a  Fanatic  or  in  Maturin's  Melmoth  the  Wanderer. 
Was  Tennyson  on  his  mettle  to  rival  or  surpass  in  verse  the 
prose  writers  of  the  '  school  of  terror '  %  The  insane  musings 
of  the  slayer  upon  his  deed  are  sometimes  worthy  of  the  best 
Elizabethan  tradition — but  a  little  more,  and  the  vein  might 
be  that  of  Sheridan's  Tilburina.  In  the  end  the  narrator  is 
cured,  cured  by  the  patriot  passion  of  war,  and  is  made  '  one 


350  TENNYSON 

with  his  kind.'  This,  no  doubt,  was  the  hardest  corner  for  the 
poet,  and  also  for  his  critics,  to  turn.  As  a  matter  of  psychology 
the  change  is  natural  enough,  or  at  least  is  made  to  seem  so. 
But  it  was  here  that  the  poet  seemed  to  be  speaking  with  his 
own  voice.  He  does  not,  however,  say,  though  he  was  rated 
for  saying,  that  war  is  good  in  itself  and  will  cure  everybody. 
He  does  say  that  it  may  cure  not  only  a  hysterical  youth  but  a 
stagnant  nation.  This  idea  was  unpalatable  to  minds  like  that 
of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  no  enthusiasm  for  the  passion  of  war. 
And  the  war  was  the  Crimean  war,  which  was  going  on.  Even 
those  who  approved  of  it  hardly  thought  that  it  was  a  remedy 
for  the  evils  declaimed  at  in  the  poem ,  of  adulterated  bread  and 
slum  violence.  But  this  inconsequence  perhaps  might  go  to 
the  account  of  the  speaker,  not  of  the  poet.  Altogether, 
Maud  was  puzzling,  and  was  long  and  considerably  disliked  ; 
its  artistic  qualities  were  obscured  by  the  dust  that  it  raised. 
It  is  really  Tennyson's  greatest  and  most  genuine  production 
of  any  length. 


VIII 

Like  Milton  and  Dryden,  Tennyson  dreamed  in  youth  of  a 
great  poem,  epical  or  dramatic,  with  Arthur  for  the  chief 
personage,  and  his  knights  around  him.  But  they  were  all  to 
be  moral  symbols.  '  K.  A.  Religious  Faith... the  Round  Table 
...liberal  institutions  ' — so  runs  an  early  note.  This  was 
before  he  had  found  the  natural  medium  for  such  a  task,  his 
blank  verse.  He  found  it,  we  know,  in  the  volume  of  1842  ;  but 
there,  besides  Morie  d' Arthur,  come  the  lyrics  Sir  Launcelot  and 
Queen  Guinevere,  which  is  purely  romantic  and  sympathetic, 
and  Sir  Galahad,  which  is  ballad -like  and  direct,  and,  for  all  the 
appearance  of  the  Grail,  unmystical.  Morte  d' Arthur  is  set  in 
a  scrap  of  country-house  idyll,  which  was  to  be  shorn  away, 
and  another  prelude  made,  when  the  poem  became  The  Passing 
of  Arthur.  The  style  is  the  decorative -heroic  ;  there  is  the 
conscious  delight  of  a  still  young  poet  in  full-vowelled  sequences 
and  consonantal  clusters,  harsh  or  sweet  as  may  best  serve. 
These  ornaments  overlay  the  simple  words  of  Malory,  which  are 
closely  followed  as  to  the  story  ;  and  another  thing,  the 
symbolism,  begins  to  overlay  them  too.  Ornament  and  sym- 
bolism often  measure  the  distance  of  Tennyson  from  Malory's 
book  or  from  the  Mabinogion,  the  sources  of  Idylls  of  the  King. 
The  ornament  is  intricate,  while  the  expression  of  the  allegory 
is  often  plain  enough,  however  it  may  be  with  its  meaning. 


IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING  351 

The  poetic  idea  in  Morte  a" Arthur,  while  an  exalted  one,  is  not 
so  single-minded  and  effective  as  it  is  in  Ulysses  ;  for  the 
Round  Table  is  but  an  '  image  of  the  mighty  world,'  whereas 
Ulysses  is  a  person,  not  an  image,  though  he  is  also  the  incarna- 
tion and  voice  of  a  certain  heroic  instinct. 

In  1856,  with  Aland  behind  him,  Tennyson  returned  to  his 
Arthurian  venture.  He  began  by  applying  to  it  a  craft,  namely 
the  portraiture  of  women,  in  which  his  friend  Millais  was  skilled. 
He  printed  privately  Enid  and  Ni?nue,1  or  The  True  and  the 
False — an  Edgeworthian  contrast  afterwards  dropped  from 
the  title.  In  the  volume  of  1859,  Idylls  of  the  King,  Nimue  is 
called  Vivien,  and  Elaine  and  Guinevere  are  added.  The  style 
is  revised  and  heightened,  and  the  more  colloquial  touches  are 
weeded  out  ;  the  Theocritean  '  idyl '  becomes  the  heroic  '  idyll.' 
The  manner,  a  not  always  stable  compound  of  dignity  and 
felicity,  is  now  established.  This  volume  has  a  symmetry  and 
foursquareness  which  are  absent  in  the  ultimate  twelve  poems 
as  a  whole.  The  allegory  is  still  faint  ;  there  are  four  tales, 
four  types,  four  different  but  not  inharmonious  frames  of  mind. 
The  portraits  are  not  all  equally  good.  Vivien  cajoles  and  spits 
and  rails,  but  remains  a  description  rather  than  a  woman. 
Arthur,  in  Guinevere,  is  scarcely  a  copybook  man  (as  is  usually 
said),  but  rather  the  wrong  sort  of  man  ;  all  too  real,  as  a 
pompous  lecturer  is  real.  William  Morris,  in  the  year  before, 
had  published  The  Defence  of  Guenevere,  the  book  which  includes 
King  Arthur's  Tomb  and  The  Chapel  in  Lyones,  poems  that  owe 
something  to  Tennyson's  early  lyrics.  But  we  have  only  to 
compare,  to  see  what  Tennyson  is  not  going  to  give  us  : 

-Must  I  now  prove 
Stone-cold  for  ever  ?     Pray  you,  does  the  Lord 
Will  that  all  folks  should  be  quite  happy  and  good  ? 

Put  that  beside  this  : 

Ah,  great  and  gentle  lord  .  .  . 
To  whom  my  false  voluptuous  pride,  that  took 
Full  easily  all  impressions  from  below, 
Would,  not  look  up  .  .  . 

What  Tennyson,  for  our  happiness,  will  give  us,  what  no  one 
else  can  give  us  so  well,  is  this  : 

She  saw, 
Wet  with  the  mists  and  smitten  by  the  lights, 
The  Dragon  of  the  great  Pendragonship 
Blaze,  making  all  the  night  a  steam  of  fire. 


352  TENNYSON 

Or  this— 

But,  ever  after,  the  small  violence  done 
Rankled  in  him  and  ruffled  all  his  heart, 
As  the  sharp  wind  that  ruffles  all  day  long 
A  little  bitter  wind  about  a  stone 
On  the  bare  coast. 

Felicity,  colour,  singularity,  magnificence,  these  we  get  in 
delightful  abundance.  They  are  all  to  be  found  in  Enid,  which 
was  cut  later  into  The  Marriage  of  Geraint  and  Oeraint  and 
Enid,  and  in  Elaine,  afterwards  called  Lancelot  and  Elaine  ;  but 
there  is  something  more  too.  The  tale  of  Enid,  drawn  from 
Lady  Charlotte  Guest's  Mabinogion,  is  not  only  a  lovely  one, 
but  mediaeval  in  the  best  possible  sense  ;  it  has,  says  a  critic, 
'  none  of  the  ineradicable  falsity  of  the  story  of  Griselda  '  ;  and 
the  poet,  however  much  he  may  decorate,  keeps'  to  it  in  spirit 
and  incident.  Its  sustained  note  of  devotion  and  pathos  may 
rank  it  even  above  Elaine,  where  such  qualities  are  somewhat 
obscured  by  the  lengthy  jealous  rhetoric  of  the  Queen  ;  nor 
does  anything  in  the  story  of  Astolat  come  so  nearly  home 
as  the  ending  of  The  Lady  of  Shalott  : 

But  Lancelot  mused  a  little  space  ; 
He  said,  '  She  has  a  lovely  face ; 
God  in  his  mercy  send  her  grace, 
The  Lady  of  Shalott. 

The  Holy  Grail  and  other  Poems  (1869,  dated  1870)  included 
The  Coming  of  Arthur,  Pelleas  and  Ettarre,  and  the  reset  Passing 
of  Arthur  ;  in  1871  followed  The  Last  Tournament.  The  cycle 
was  now  announced  as  complete,  but  in  1885,  in  the  Tiresias 
volume,  came  the  afterthought,  Balin  and  Balan.  In  the  last 
recension  (1888),  the  order  and  text  of  the  Idylls  were  finally 
given  as  we  now  have  them,  after  a  long  succession  of  changes. 
This  order,  then,  is  very  different  from  the  order  of  composition, 
the  first  idyll  written  being  now  the  last.  Tennyson  has  been 
criticised  as  though  no  result  thus  attained  could  be  artistic. 
But  if  it  be  not  artistic,  the  to -and -fro  nature  of  composition 
need  not  be  at  fault,  but  rather  the  character  of  the  enterprise. 
We  can  see  how  the  additional  idylls  made  this  more  difficult. 

They  are  made  at  different  times,  and  are  various  in  key, 
and  are  the  harder  to  fit  into  a  harmonious  whole.  The  Coming 
of  Arthur  is  a  rather  desperate  attempt  to  bind  together  in 
advance  the  already  existing  idylls.  One  problem  is  to  make 
the  magical  environment  of  Arthur  accord  with  his  abstract 
and  idealised  character.  This  difficulty  is  felt  most  at  the 
conclusion ;  for  how,  we  ask,  should  such  a  half -modern,  half- 


ALLEGORY  353 

symbolic  person  as  Arthur  has  now  become  deserve  to  disappear 
to  Avilion  ?  And  the  curse  that  hangs  over  his  origin  is 
equally  lost  upon  such  a  personage.  The  best  poetry  in  The 
Coming  of  Arthur  is  found  in  the  lyric,  and  in  the  dream  of 
Leodogran  ;  and  of  course  there  is  much  splendour  in  the  detail. 

In  The  Holy  Grail,  which  Tennyson  truly  called  '  one  of  the 
most  imaginative  of  my  poems,'  the  great  passages  of  Malory — 
the  girding  of  Galahad,  the  passing  of  the  Grail  through  the  hall 
of  knights,  and  the  visit  of  Lancelot  to  the  chamber  whose 
breath  was  like  a  furnace — are  transported  without  loss  of 
keeping,  for  all  the  infusion  of  colour  and  of  exalted  meaning. 
Tennyson  is  true  to  mediaeval  sentiment  ;  no  one  can  say  that 
here  he  confounds  purity  with  respectability.  On  the  contrary, 
the  flying,  holy,  crimson  lights  that  shoot  through  the  poem  are 
but  the  outward  sign  of  the  active  passion,  transcendental  and 
supreme,  for  purity  itself,  as  the  virtue  was  medievally  under- 
stood. The  opening  picture  of  homely  monkish  life  and  talk 
is  not  less  genuine.  From  Malory  also  came  the  hint  for  the 
idea  that  the  quest  for  the  Grail  betokens  the  break-up  of  the 
goodly  fellowship  ;  few  of  the  knights  prove  worthy  of  that 
quest  ;  and  these  shadows  become  darker  in  Pelleas  and 
Ettarre,  with  its  notes  of  scorn  and  faithlessness  and  the  final 
execration  of  Pelleas  as  he  flings  away  into  the  dark.  The  Last 
Tournament,  which  gives  the  bitter  ending  of  the  tale  of  Tristram 
without  any  of  the  preceding  rapture,  is  in  a  like  strain.  In 
Balin  and  Balan,  which  in  the  final  arrangement  comes  as  a 
prelude  to  Merlin  and  Vivien,  there  is  little  of  the  uplifted 
spirit  and  lofty  pathos  which  attends  the  progress  of  the 
brothers,  '  in  life  and  death  good  knights,'  through  Swinburne's 
Tale  of  Balen.  It  is  a  pity  that  Tennyson  had  to  discolour 
these  two  great  stories  in  order  to  suit  them  to  his  picture  of 
social  degeneracy.  But  the  prose  argument 1  that  he  dictated 
of  Balin  and  Balan  makes  no  small  amends.  The  Passing  of 
Arthur  concludes  the  whole  ;  and  we  can  now  look  back  on 
the  representative,  or  allegorical,  aspect  of  the  Idylls  of  the 
King.  The  allegory,  which  was  in  the  poet's  mind  from  the 
first,  comes  out  more  as  he  proceeds,  and  it  is  in  at  the  death 
of  Arthur. 

Tennyson  preferred  never  to  press  it,  or  to  make  it  quite 
clear  ;  he  leaves  it  suggestive  rather  than  formal.  It  exhibits 
'  sense  at  war  with  soul '  ;  thes"  code  of  the  Round  Table  or- 
dains a  certain  pattern  of  conduct,  chivalrous  and  pious,  in 
which  self-sacrifice,  bravery,  and  purity  predominate,  and 
which  is  proclaimed  and  vowed.  The  actors  are  the  knights 
vol.  t.  z 


354  TENNYSON 

who  obey  or  disobey  this  rule,  and  the  women  who  inspire  or 
discourage  them.  In  time,  the  cardinal  Christian  virtue  is 
betrayed  by  the  noblest  knight  and  noblest  lady,  though  not 
without  a  remorse  which  intensifies  to  the  point  of  repentance. 
Modred,  Ettarre,  Vivien  are  foremost  in  the  scene.  Arthur, 
who  as  in  Spenser  binds  together  all  the  virtues,  is  left  and  dies. 
It  is  a  tragedy  ;  but,  as  in  Shakespeare,  the  world  is  to  begin 
again  after  it,  with  the  prophecy  of  a  new  hope  and  order. 
Further  than  this  Tennyson's  intention  need  not  be  driven  ; 
but  we  have  his  own  words  for  his  faith,  the  faith  which  alone, 
as  he  believed,  can  survive  any  spectacle  of  the  kind  : 

I  have  expressed  there  [in  The  Holy  Grait]  my  strong  belief  as  to 
the  Reality  of  the  Unseen.  The  end,  when  the  king  speaks  of  his 
work  and  of  his  visions,  is  intended  to  be  the  summing  up  of  all  in 
the  highest  note  by  the  highest  of  human  men.  These  three  lines 
in  Arthur's  speech  are  the  (spiritually)  central  lines  of  the  Idylls  : 

In  moments  when  he  feels  he  cannot  die 
And  knows  himself  no  vision  to  himself. 
Nor  the  High  God  a  vision. 

Here  Arthur  is  real  because  he  is  Tennyson,  and  not  the  Prince 
Consort  or  another  ;  and  the  passage  that  follows  in  the 
Memoir  (ch.  xxvii.)  shows  how  this  was  Tennyson's  indefeasible 
conviction  :  '  You  never,  never  can  convince  me  that  the  / 
is  not  an  eternal  Reality,  and  that  the  spiritual  is  not  the  only 
true  and  real  part  of  me.' 

This  is  modern-philosophical,  not  mediaeval ;  and  the  first 
proposition  is  also  just  the  opposite  of  what  a  Buddhist  would 
affirm  with  equal  certitude  ;  but  whatever  we  may  think  of  it 
philosophically,  Tennyson  has  here  travelled  furthest  from  his 
material,  and  we  have  to  ask  how,  after  all,  the  symbolism  in  the 
Idylls  will  consent  to  join  itself  to  the  story.  It  does  not  join  ; 
the  attempt  is  a  failure,  in  spite  of  all  the  points  of  genuine 
contact  with  mediaeval  feeling  ;  but  the  failure  is  more  inter- 
esting than  most  successes  ;  the  allegory  does  not  do  much  harm, 
and  there  is  always  the  handiwork  to  fall  back  on.  The  Idylls 
remain  idylls,  separate  poems,  interlaced  by  a  hundred  threads, 
with  their  incongruous  elements  half -hidden  by  the  execution. 
Their  poetic  virtues  are  those  of  Tennyson's  work  at  large.  But 
they  add  profusely  to  his  account,  more  than  any  other  of  his 
long  poems.  Their  faults  delighted  their  public.  Their  chief 
and  central  weakness  is  their  treatment  of  passionate  love, 
which  is  immensely  talked  about,  and  also  considerably  scolded, 
without  ever  being  allowed  to  show  itself  frankly  and  simply. 


ALLEGORY— LYRIC  355 

But  the  pictures,  the  '  interiors  :  and  pageants,  the  epic  similes, 
which  contain  some  of  Tennyson's  best  observation,  the  songs, 
the  fresh  and  subtle  prosodic  effects,  are  hard  to  exhaust. 
And  there  is  grandeur,  not  once  or  twice  only,  though  there  is 
also  sometimes  the  mere  imitation  of  it.  And  if,  not  content 
with  imitations,  or  approximations,  or  beautiful  dexterities, 
we  insist,  in  taking  leave  of  the  Idylls,  on  Tennyson  doing  his 
utmost  for  us  in  the  way  of  grandeur,  this  is  the  kind  of  poetry 
we  shall  think  of  : 

Then  in  a  moment  when  they  blazed  again 

Opening,  I  saw  the  least  of  little  stars 

Down  on  the  waste,  and  straight  beyond  the  star 

I  saw  the  spiritual  city  and  all  her  spire* 

And  gateways  in  a  glory  like  one  pearl — 

No  larger,  tho'  the  goal  of  all  the  saints — 

Strike  from  the  sea ;   and  from  the  star  there  shot 

A  rose-red  sparkle  to  the  city,  and  there 

Dwelt,  and  i  knew  it  was  the  Holy  Grail, 

Which  never  eyes  on  earth  again  shall  see. 


IX 

Tennyson's  lyrical  gift  spans  the  sixty  years  of  his  production. 
It  is  not  equally  active  all  the  time,  but  comes  and  goes  like  a 
frequent  rainbow.  It  is  heard  in  description,  satire,  and  many 
other  kinds  of  verse  that  are  not  lyrical  in  themselves.  It  gets 
into  narrative,  not  only  of  the  ballad -type,  but  such  as  we 
find  in  The  Voyage  of  Maeldune.  It  also  sometimes  gets  into 
the  blank  verse.  The  rhymeless  lyrics  in  The  Princess  fall  into 
stanzas,  and  some  of  those  in  the  Idylls  go  into  triads,  with  an 
echo  or  refrain  that  recalls  the  bell-ringer's  craft.  The  same 
overflow  of  the  lyric  faculty  occurs  everywhere  in  Swinburne, 
because  he  cannot  help  it  ;  in  Tennyson  it  is  a  deliberate  use  of 
surplus  power. 

His  lyrics  properly  so-called,  including  his  songs,  share  in 
the  general  characters  of  his  poetry — its  close  texture,  its 
consciousness,  its  studious  management  of  sound,  and  its  usual, 
though  by  no  means  universal,  leisureliness  of  progress.  He 
does  not  always  go  slow,  as  The  Brook,  The  Voyage,  The  Revenge, 
and  The  Defence  of  Lucknow  prove  in  various  ways.  In  the 
last  two  of  these  weight  is  added  to  pace  ;  the  waves  come 
high  as  well  as  fast,  and  the  troughs  are  deep  between.  All 
four  are  triumphs  of  execution  ;  and  what  Tennyson  does  in 
them  is  to  make  English  more  like  Italian,  and  to  circumvent 
as  much  as  may  be  the  inherent  abruptness  and  knottiness  of 


356  TENNYSON 

our  language.  He  is  justly  famed  for  the  riches  and  cunning 
of  his  vowel-sequences,  in  which  he  seeks  variety  as  well  as 
resonance,  and  for  his  avoidance  of  hiatus  and  conflicting 
sibilants,  and  of  harsh  sounds  generally  except  for  a  purpose. 
No  one  could  have  written  so  well,  for  an  English  De  Volgari 
Eloquent  ia,  the  chapter  where  Dante  distinguishes  the  words 
that  are  severally  '  glossy,'  and  '  combed-out,'  and  '  rumpled.' 
This  kind  of  skill  is  best  seen  and  is  most  wanted  in  lyric,  where 
sound  and  substance  have  to  be  most  nearly  blended,  because 
it  is  here  that  the  substance  is  least  able  to  excuse  or  carry  off 
any  failure  in  sound. 

He  does  not  /in  this  province,  owe  much  to  any  other  poet, 
though  we  can  point  to  things  that  other  poets  might  have 
admired  as  congenial  to  themselves.  '  The  splendour  falls  on 
castle  walls  '  might  have  been  envied  by  Scott  as  a  great  thing 
somewhat  in  his  own  style  ;  and  the  embodiment  of  hardly 
wordable  feeling  in  '  Tears,  idle  tears  '  would  have  come  home 
to  Shelley  ;  '  the  passion  of  the  past,"  Tennyson  called  it, 
saying  he  had  often  felt  the  like  in  his  childhood.  Of  the 
classical  lyrics,  ode-like  or  commemorative,  something  has  been 
said  already.  Tennyson  is  possibly  more  at  home  in  these 
carefully  concerted  pieces,  be  they  short,  or  long  with  full 
rolling  lines,  than  in  the  briefer  spontaneous  kind  ;  and  I  have 
also  remarked  on  the  rather  exceptional  occasions  when  he 
attains  to,  or  rather  is  visited  and  possessed  by.  the  note  of 
perfectly  natural  song.  The  list  could  be  enlarged,  of  course  ; 
we  could  add  the  overture  to  the  Wellington  ode,  the  first  verse 
of  '  Come  not,  when  I  am  dead,'  and  other  things.  Tennyson 
seems  to  have  felt,  however,  that  these  visitations  were  rare, 
to  judge  by  his  language  about  Burns  and  the  Caroline  singers  : 
1  I  would  give  all  my  poetry  to  have  made  one  song  like  that  !  ' 
And  we  can,  if  we  like,  measure  the  rest  of  his  lyric  by  its 
distance  from  this  kind  of  effect.  Many  of  the  numbers  of 
In  Memoriam  move  lyrically,  but  their  elaborated  harmonies, 
like  the  alcaics  on  Milton,  are  at  the  opposite  pole  to  song. 
The  patriot  narrative  chants,  of  a  type  that  Tennyson  more  or 
less  invented,  are  naturally  much,  more  direct,  yet  rather  in  the 
way  of  high  oratory,  which  is  not  satisfied  with  any  instrument 
but  the  most  sonorous.  The  Revenge  and  The  Defence  of 
Lucknow,  both  in  uniform  measure,  ire  examples.  In  the 
latter  of  these  the  lines  are  shorter  and  choppier,  and  the  tension 
is  sharper  accordingly,  as  befits  the  more  terrible  nature  of  the 
doom,  which  here  threatens  women  and  children  and  not  men 
only.     Still,  amongst  Mutiny  poems,  there  is  perhaps  a  still 


LYRICS-DRAMA  357 

sharper  suspense  in  Christina  Rossetti's  little  piece,  In  the 
Round  Tower  at  Jhansi  ;  and  Sir  Alfred  Lyall's  Indian  poem,- 
to  be  noted  hereafter,  hits  hardest  of  all.  The  Voyage  of 
Maeldune,  which  is  again  most  highly  wrought,  leaves  behind  it 
a  glorious  confusion  of  imagery,  as  it  is  meant  to  do,  and  it  is 
a  great  feat,  being  a  lyrical  story  which  is  charged  with  descrip- 
tion and  yet  is  not  thereby  retarded.  The  Charge  of  the  Heavy 
Brigade  is  also  one  of  Tennyson's  most  expert  lyrics,  though 
it  is  rather  too  cunning  in  modulation  to  gain  all  the  suffrages 
for  which  it  was  written. 


X 

Three  of  Tennyson's  dramas  fall,  as  to  subject  and  spirit, 
into  their  place  beside  his  patriotic  poems  :    these  are  Queen 
Mary,  Harold,  and  Becket ;    he  wished  to  produce  a  series  of 
'  history  plays  '   on  reigns   which  the   Elizabethans   had  left 
untouched.     The    Shakespearian    inspiration    is    plainest    in 
Queen  Mary,  the  earliest  of  the  seven.     But  the  best  parts  of  it 
are  still  Tennysonian  and*pictorial,  like  the  scene  where  the 
younger  Wyatt  muses  over* his  father's  sonnets,  or  the  descrip- 
tion of  Lady  Jane  Grey  at  the  block.     It  is  difficult  to  fill  the 
stage  with  the  character  of  Mary  ;  her  fanaticism,  her  bewailing 
of  her  barrenness,  and  her  passion  for  Philip  are  traits  that 
encourage  Tennyson's  old  style  of  vehement  and  rather  tire- 
some rhetoric.     This,  in  fact,  is  his  danger  all  through   his 
plays  ;    and  it  is  not  the  kind  of  style  that  holds  the  theatre, 
though  it  is  the  supposed  needs  of  the  theatre  that  prompt  him 
to  fall  back  upon  it.     Thus  in  Queen  Mary  we  feel  that  Tenny- 
son's  strong  brain  is  struggling  with   an  inappropriate   form 
of  writing  which  comes  easy  to  him.     But  in  Harold,  which  was 
not  acted,  there  is  much  poetic  flame,  and  the  tragic  clash  of 
characters,  moving  towards  a  predestined  end,  is  conveyed  with 
power  ;  and  moreover  Tennyson  is  content  with  his  own  style, 
and  makes  the  utmost  of  it,  not  drawing  here  particularly  upon 
the  older  drama.     The  chiming  snatch  of  Edith,  '  Love  is  come 
with  a  song  and  a  smile,'  is  like  one  of  the  interludes  in  The 
Princess.     Becket,  the  last  of  these  chronicle  plays,  was  the 
most  successful  on  the  boards,  though  Tennyson  almost  de- 
spaired of  such  success  ;  the  pageantry,  the  acting  of  Sir  Henry 
Irving,  and  the  swiftness  of  the  action,  which  is  little  troubled  by 
curious  writing,  all  helped  it.     Tennyson's  long  struggle  for  a 
dramatic  style  is  better  rewarded  in  Becket  than  elsewhere  ;  but 
he  hardly  got  free  of  the  habit  of  tirade,  which  is  essentially  of 


358  TENNYSON 

the  Aylmcrs  Field  order,  though  it  is  now  transferred  to  a 
greater  scene. 

The  romantic  plays  are  rich  in  poetry  ;  except  The  Promise 
of  May,  with  its  invented  seducer-epicurean-unbeliever  ;  of 
this  work,  least  said  soonest  mended.  In  The  Cup,  on  the 
other  hand,  not  only  is  the  execution  beautiful,  but  the  story  is 
sound.  It  is  called  a  tragedy,  but  there  is  no  tragic  struggle  of 
motive  in  it  ;  it  is  a  short  story  of  righteous  vengeance  in  which 
both  avenger  and  victim  fall  ;  as  simple  as  a  ballad,  but 
decorated  with  all  Tennyson's  lifelong  skill.  The  streaks  of 
good  nature  in  the  deeply-dyed  murderer  Synorix  are  indeed 
not  made  credible  ;  but  the  light  falls  full  on  the  radiant  figure 
of  Camma  who  feigns  to  accept  marriage  with  him,  the  slayer  of 
her  husband,  in  order  to  punish  him  and  die  with  him  at  the 
altar.  The  play  is  a  new  kind  of  '  Hellenic,'  a  species  of  poem 
in  which  Tennyson  had  first  proved  his  power  more  than  forty 
years  before.  The  little  scene  called  The  Falcon,  versified  from 
Boccaccio's  tale,  is  a  worthy  pendant  to  The  Cup,  in  point  of 
handiwork,  though  the  falcon  itself  is  the  only  sacrifice  ;  and 
The  Foresters  is  pleasant. 

XI 

Books  have  been  written  on  Tennyson's  distillations  of  the 
poets,  on  his  management  of  description,  on  his  political  and 
social  ideas,  and  on  his  '  teaching  '  at  large.  One  should  be 
written  on  his  use  of  words,  by  some  poet  of  the  same  stamp. 
Every  one  sees  his  general  mastery  of  them,  and  also  his  tricks 
and  obvious  gestures  of  style — such  as  his  use  and  abuse  of  the 
kenning,  or  pictorial  description  of  something  that  is  not  called 
by  its  own  name .  '  The  word  that  is  the  symbol  of  myself  '  ; 
'  the  chalice  of  the  grapes  of  God  '  ;  '  the  knightly  growth  that 
fringed  his  lips  '  :  these  differ  from  the  old  Germanic  habit  of 
language,  in  Anglo-Saxon  or  Icelandic,  because  they  are  longer, 
roundabout  phrases  and  not  mere  compounds  like  the  '  surge - 
floater  '  or  the  '  ring-dealer/  But  they  are  due  to  the  same 
desire  to  secure  dignity,  richness,  and  variety.  And  there  is 
the  further  aim  of  expressing  a  peculiar  sort  of  beauty,  or  iri- 
descency  of  phrase.  This  occurs  especially  in  connexion  with 
colour  : 

But  on  the  damsel's  forehead  shame,  pride,  wrath 

Slew  the  May- white. 

Or  thus  : 

and  glowing  round  her  dewy  eyes 
The  circled  Iris  of  a  night  of  tears. 


STYLES— VERSIFICATION  359 

Such  examples  are  endless ;  but  they  blend  into  the  poet's 
general  mode  of  figured  speech,  which  in  his  heroic  and  mock- 
heroic  blank  verse  spreads  out  into  formal  simile  of  the 
traditional  sort,  but  more  often  simply  turns  to  packed  vivid 
metaphor.  And  if  we  do  analyse  the  result,  we  never  come  on 
generality  or  vacancy,  but  always  on  something  which  is  first 
substantially  seen  or  definitely  heard,  and  is  then  patiently 
brooded  on  until  the  image  of  it  is  realised  in  the  predestined 
words.  Tennyson,  no  doubt,  misses  the  effects  that  are  won 
by  a  happy  gambling  with  words,  which  are  flung  down  for  the 
stake  of  all  or  nothing.  Such  is  Browning's  way,  and  his  luck 
in  such  things  is  immense  : 

Ah,  see  !   the  sun  breaks  o'er  Calvano  ; 

He  strikes  the  great  gloom 
And  flutters  it  o'er  the  mount's  summit 

In  airy  gold  fume  ! 

This  is  not  smooth,  but  it  gives  an  instantaneous  vision  of  the 
scene.  The  other  method  of  showing  a  sunrise,  the  method  of 
'  the  faultless  painter,'  who  waits  until  all  is  quite  right,  is  seen 
in  such  lines  as 

Far  furrowing  into  light  the  mounded  rack 
Beyond  the  fair  green  field  and  eastern  sea. 

Tennyson's  own  letters  and  remarks  supply  the  best  notion  of 
this  admirable  way  of  working  ;  and  when  he  seemed  forced  or 
surprising  he  always  knew  the  facts  behind  better  than  his 
critics.  He  remembered  when  and  where  he  had  seen  the 
'  slow-dropping  veils  of  thinnest  lawn,'  or  had  heard  the  wind 

shake  the  songs,  the  whispers,  and  the  shrieks 
Of  the  wild  wood  together. 

In  this  kind  of  work  Tennyson,  so  far  from  being  open  to 
criticism,  supplies  a  standard  of  Tightness  behind  which  no  one 
need  try  to  go.  The  new  thing,  however,  is  his  peculiar 
notation,  which  seems  the  more  his  own  the  more  we  compare 
him  with  any  previous  poet,  be  it  Keats  or  another.  Its 
characteristic  is  a  condensation  which  is  only  limited  by  the 
law  of  beauty,  and  the  effect  of  which  is  always  to  make  the 
pace  of  the  poetry  slower,  encrusting  the  line  as  it  does  with 
gemwork  that  we  have  to  stop  and  study,  and  lending  itself, 
in  respect  of  sound,  to  a  rich  crowding  of  stresses  and  musical 
consonants.  Thus  the  imagery  does  something  to  determine 
the  cast  of  the  actual  versification  ;  and  so  does  Tennyson's 
habitual  compression  of  his  thought,  and  his  careful  exploration, 


360  TENNYSON 

in  his  speeches,  of  all  the  resources  of  rhetoric.  To  all  this  the 
simplest  clue  is  found  in  a  study  of  his  metres  1 ;  on  which 
excellent  chapters  have  been  written,  though  the  subject  might 
fill  a  small  volume.  Something  has  been  said  of  it  here  in  con- 
nexion with  his  lyrics  ;  and  on  his  main  achievement,  his  blank 
verse,  one  remark  must  serve. 

It  is,  for  good  and  ill,  the  most  conscious  blank  verse  in  the 
language,  of  any  written  by  a  master  ;  more  conscious  even 
than  Milton's  ;  for  Milton,  intensely  as  he  studies  his  form, 
forgets  himself  more  often  than  Tennyson  does  in  the  passion 
or  exaltation  of  his  subject.  If  this  seems  too  fine  a  point,  let 
the  reader  compare  Ulysses  or  Tiresias  with  one  of  the  greater 
speeches  of  Satan.  And  we,  in  these  matters,  are  led  by  the 
poet  ;  we  too  think,  in  the  measure  that  he  does,  more  of  the 
manipulation  and  less  of  the  thing  said.  This  is  why  Tennyson 
seldom  leaves  us  wholly  free  to  think  simply  of  what  he  is  saying  ; 
and  though  the  remark  applies  in  a  measure  to  all  his  verse,  it 
applies  less  to  his  lyric  than  to  his  meditative  verse,  and  most 
of  all  to  his  blank  verse.  Yet,  if  this  drawback  be  once  reckoned 
with,  and  if  we  also  accept,  as  a  general  habit,  the  comparative 
slowness  of  his  movement  in  verse,  we  can  then  follow  the  changes 
and  modulations  of  his  blank  line,  and  of  his  concerted  para- 
graphs, with  the  pleasure  that  he  designs  for  us.  Much 
technical  statement,  which  would  be  out  of  place  here,  would  be 
necessary  for  a  full  description.  The  illustrations  already  given 
from  the  English  idylls  show  one  or  two  varieties  of  his  heroic 
line  in  its  lighter  uses  ;  and  of  these  the  great  repertory  is  The 
Princess.  The  more  impassioned  dramatic  monologues  dis- 
close, naturally,  a  wider  range  of  effect  ;  and,  for  a  single 
example,  Lucretius  may  be  taken  as  Tennyson's  most  surprising 
leat  as  an  executant.  In  his  dramas  he  seeks  to  push  yet 
further  beyond  the  ordinary  limits  of  the  metre  ;  there  are,  by 
the  way,  some  unusual  experiments,  including  a  four-syllabled 
foot,  with  a  hypermetrical  close,  and  only  three  full  stresses 
in  the  line  : 

That  you  may  feed  |  your  fan  |  cy  on  |  the  gl6r  |  y  of  it. 

But  it  is  impossible  to  begin  so  long  a  story  :  let  the  student 
think  how  much  there  would  be  to  say  on  the  verse -craft  of  the 
following  four  separate  lines,  to  go  no  further  : 

'  The  sword  rose,  the  hind  fell,  the  herd  was  driven.' 

'  Melody  on  branch,  and  melody  in  mid-air.' 

'  Camelot,  a  city  of  shadowy  palaces.'  - 

'  Immingled  with  heaven's  azure  wavenngly.' 


CHARLES  TENNYSON  TURNER       361 

Or  let  him  go  through  the  prolonged  complex  sound-pattern  of 
Love  and  Duty,  with  its  passionate  vibrations,  from  the  technical 
point  of  view. 

Tem^son  commanded  a  style  and  a  music  adequate,  we  may 
think,  for  the  great  poems  which  he  never  wrote.  They  would 
have  been  a  noble  raiment  for  ideas  which  never  reached  him, 
and  are  sometimes  too  good  a  raiment  for  the  ideas  which  he 
expressed  ;  and  it  is  doubtful  if  this  is  a  fault  on  the  right  side. 
But  he  had  many  noble  ideas  too,  not  necessarily  philosophical, 
but  poetical,  ideas  ;  and  he  arrayed  them  perfectly.  Perhaps 
the  conceptions  embodied  in  his  classical  poems,  such  as  Ulysses 
and  Tiresias,  wear  the  best  of  all.  And  he  invents  a  new  style, 
an  admirable  one,  for  the  expression  of  many  strange  but  real 
feelings  ;  of  these  Maud  is  the  chief  monument.  And,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  can  sing  ;  now  and  then  simply,  more  often  not 
so  simply  but  still  with  a  wonderful  trained  voice  of  much 
compass.  Tennyson  is  the  chief  poet,  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  of  the  tribe  to  which  belong  Milton  and  Gray — and, 
let  us  add,  his  own  master,  Virgil. 


XII 

The  sonnets  of  Charles  Tennyson  x  (1808-79),  who  assumed  the 
surname  of  Turner,  number  three  hundred  and  forty-two,  and 
are  formally  distinguished  by  the  great  freedom  and  supple- 
ness of  their  rhyming  schemes,  always  within  the  limit  of  the 
fourteen  lines  ;  and  by  the  natural  and  imperceptible  character 
of  such  metrical  heresies,  which  do  but  follow  the  movement  of 
the  feeling.  Great  suavity,  ease,  and  simplicity,  and  a  constant 
and  reticent  sense  of  beauty,  mark  the  verse  of  Tennyson 
Turner.  He  is  best  when  he  sings,  in  what  he  calls  the  '  quick- 
spent  '  sonnet,  of  small  and  shy  matters  ;  he  has  a  Cowper-like 
preference  and  affection  for  them,  though  like  Cowper  he 
strays  now  and  then  into  uncongenial  declamation.  For  much 
of  his  life  he  was  a  parson  in  a  lonely  village  on  the  wolds,  in 
what  is  still  one  of  the  unspoilt  and  unadveitised  parts  of 
England.  Alfred  Tennyson  gives  the  solitude  and  solemnity 
of  these  regions,  and  their  roomy  horizons  with  '  the  rounding 
grey.'  Charles  Tennyson  Turner  gives  their  gentler,  homelier 
aspects  and  '  old  ruralities,'  and  sings  of  the  April  day,  the 
harvest-home,  the  '  thaw-wind,'  the  light  on  the  gossamer,  the 
steam  threshing-machine,  even  the  '  scarecrow,  or  lnalkin.'     He 


362  TENNYSON  TURNER 

is  none  the  worse  when  he  shortens  his  quiet  and  pious 
morals  and  keeps  to  description  : 

Upon  the  golden  aconites  I  look'd, 
And  on  the  leafless  willows  as  they  waved — 
And  on  the  broad  leaved,  half-thaw'd  ivy-tod, 
That  glitter'd,  dripping  down  upon  the  sod. 

Tennyson  Turner's  range,  however,  is  not  a  small  one  ;  his 
sonnets  are  a  diary  of  his  sympathies,  travels,  and  reading. 
There  are  children's  little  themes,  the  rocking-horse  and  the 
dead  pet  bird  ;  Words  wort  hian  notes,  like  that  on  the  Moselle 
Boatman  and  his  Daughter ;  bolder  things,  well  ventured,  like 
The  Lion's  Skeleton  ;  Greek  and  Roman  memories,  with  the 
praise  of  him 

who  set  his  stately  seal 

Of  Roman  words  on  all  the  forms  he  saw 

Of  old-world  husbandry  ; 

and  with  the  beautiful  imaginative  meditation  on  The  Lachry- 
matory ;  and  that  on  The  White  Horse  of  Westbury,  which  comes 
to  life  and  relapses  into  chalk.  There  is  much  else  ;  Tennyson 
Turner  well  merited  his  brother's  praise,  and  that  of  their 
friend  Spedding  and  of  Coleridge  ;  his  verse  is  a  relief  after  the 
heavily  charged  and  intricately  wrought  sonnets  of  another 
school ;  and  his  extreme  modesty  and  aversion  to  emphasis 
cannot  prejudice  his  position. 

The  verse  of  the  eldest  of  the  brothers,  Frederick  Tennyson 
(1807-98),  has  less  definite  character  than  that  of  Charles,  in 
spite  of  the  manifest  force  and  accomplishment  which  impressed 
FitzGerald  and  other  contemporaries.  His  classical  poems, 
and  the  blank  verse  in  which  most  of  them  are  written,  are  in  no 
sense  an  echo  of  the  Laureate.  But  there  is  a  want  of  concen- 
tration in  his  work.  Sometimes,  in  his  earliest  independent 
volume,  Days  and  Hours  (1854),  the  inspiration  is  rather  that 

of  Shelley  : 

When  the  poet's  heart  is  dead, 

That  with  fragrance,  light,  and  sound 
Like  a  Summerday  was  fed, 

Where,  Oh  !   where  shall  it  be  found, 
In  Sea,  or  Air,  or  underground  ? 

It  should  be  a  sunny  place  ; 

An  urn  of  odors ;   a  still  well. 
Upon  whose  undisturbed  face 

The  light  of  Heaven  shall  love  to  dwell, 

And  its  far  depths  make  visible. 

In  The  Isles  of  Greece  (1890)  Frederick  Tennyson  builds  up, 


FREDERICK  TENNYSON  363 

on  the  basis  of  Greek  lyrical  fragments  and  traditions,  a  series 
of  Hellenics  centring  in  the  figures  of  Sappho  and  Alcaeus, 
under  such  titles  as  Apollo,  Phaon,  Myrsilus,  and  the  like. 
There  is  no  want  of  dignity,  or  of  accurate  scenery  and  costume, 
but  the  total  effect  is  rather  cold.  More  classical  tales  followed 
in  Daphne  (1891)  ;  but  Frederick  Tennyson,  publishing  as  he 
did  so  late,  just  when  criticism  was  beginning  to  turn  even 
upon  his  overshadowing  brother,  won  little  note  ;  and  even 
apart  from  such  disadvantage,  never  seems  to  have  attained 
to  finally  memorable  form. 


CHAPTER   XIV 
THE  BROWNINGS 


Irritable  men  of  letters  like  Landor  and  Carlyle  found  to 
their  relief  that  Browning  *  was  unlike  themselves,  being  in 
common  intercourse  hearty,  and  normal,  and  unperturbed  ;  a 
man  who  might  have  done  well  in  law  or  diplomacy  or  any 
strong-headed  profession.  There  was  even  a  fancy,  latterly, 
that  he  had  somewhere  a  private  genius,  or  daemon,  who  did 
his  verses  for  him.  In  the  Eighties,  when  many  intellectual 
persons  were  adoring  and  explaining  2  him,  society  remarked 
on  his  easy  suit  of  chain-armour,  which  kept  the  earnest  souls 
at  a  courteous  distance.  This  mundane  behaviour  was  no 
mere  defence  in  Browning,  but  well  in  keeping  with  his  peculiar 
talent. 

For  it  suits  his  thirst  for  hard  and  real  situations,  for  history 
and  Newgate  annals,  for  the  story  of  forgotten  people  'of  im- 
portance in  their  day  '  ;  in  whose  company,  as  in  all  companies, 
he  moved  so  readily ;  they  might  be  painters,  thinkers,  musicians, 
dreamers,  politicians,  fighters,  lovers — especially  lovers.  How- 
ever intricate  and  spiry  a  fabric  he  may  raise,  he  likes  to  feel 
fhe  firm  rock  beneath  him,  and  to  quarry  out  of  it.  Andrea 
del  Sarto,  and  Ponipilia,  and  Ned  Bratts,  and  Miranda  in 
Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  had  really  existed  in  some  such 
shape  as  he  presents  them.  When  he  draws  upon  fiction  and 
legend,  for  Ivan  Ivanovitch  or  Caliban,  his  aim  is  similar  ;  it 
is  to  preserve  keeping  ;  he  refuses  to  be  untrue  to  the  story 
and  its  associations.  And  when  he  invents,  it  is  in  the  same 
spirit  again  ;  he  wants  to  produce  the  illusion  of  fact  and  not 
the  illusion  of  dreams — to  be  right  about  situation  and  motive, 
just  as  if  he  had  history  behind  him.  All  this  means  a  wide 
acquaintance  with  the  big  world,  past  and  present,  real  and 
imaginary.  Browning  is  a  man  of  the  world  in  this  consider- 
able sense  of  the  term.  He  has  been  compared  with  some 
reason  to  a  novelist  ;  but  he  is  more  like  a  critic  who  tries  to 
recover  the  features  of  past  or  alien  minds  and  to  recreate  them 

864 


BROWNING— CAREER  365 

faithfully.  This  too  is  the  way  of  Walter  Pater,  otherwise  so 
unlike  Browning.  The  aim  is  to  portray  the  spirit  of  Fra 
Lippo  or  Leonardo,  of  Marius  or  Karshish,  in  all  its  windings, 
in  its  setting  of  circumstance  :  the  man  in  his  habit  as  he  lived. 
Browning  makes  the  man  speak  for  himself,  always  in  some 
testing  and  critical  situation  (as  Pater,  indeed,  points  out)  ; 
in  his  poems  there  is  none  of  the  stillness  of  the  Imaginary 
Portraits  ;  and  the  procedure,  though  perhaps  not  more  difficult 
than  the  exquisite  analysis  of  Emerald  Uthwart  or  Gaston, 
brings  us  noticeably  nearer  to  life.  Once  more,  it  has  to  be 
asked  what  Browning  made  of  this  gift,  and  into  what  moulds 
his  invention  fell. 

The  career  of  Robert  Browning  (1812-89)  falls  into  some  half 
a  dozen  acts  or  phases,  which  may  be  thus  abbreviated  : 

(1 )  1833-40. — First  appeared  Pauline,  Paracelsus,  and Swdello, 
the  early  long  poems,  full  of  confused  wealth,  but  cast  into 
shapeless  and  prolix  forms  which  are  plainly  inadequate  to  the 
poet's  talent.  There  is  also  the  first  of  Browning's  plays, 
Strafford  (1837).  (2)  1841-46. — Next  appear  the  eight  numbers 
of  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  six  of  which  contains  dramas  : 
namely  Pippa  Passes,  King  Victor  and  King  Charles,  The 
Return  of  the  Druses,  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  Colombe's  Birthday, 
A  Soid's  Tragedy,  and  Luria.  Browning- is  now  in  the  full  tide 
of  theatrical  and  other  society,  and  has  formed  many  friend- 
ships ;  but  no  contemporary  writer,  except  his  wife  and  possibly 
Carlyle,  was  ever  to  influence  his  genius.  The  plays  are  not 
exactly  plays ,  but  they  show  his  genius  clearing  up  magnificently ; 
and  in  other  two  numbers  of  Bells  and  Pomegranates  (No.  iii., 
1842,  and  No.  vii.,  1845)  his  true  territory,  the  shorter  poem, 
is  disclosed.  (3)  1850-64. — Browning's  married  life  (1846-61) 
is  the  golden  age  of  his  talent  and  his  happiness.  During  this 
period  the  spell  of  Italy  is  at  its  strongest,  and  it  continues 
afterwards.  His  correspondence,  followed  by  his  acquaintance, 
with  Miss  Barrett  begins  early  in  1845.  He  writes  another  long 
work,  Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day  (1850).  In  1855  come 
the  two  volumes  of  Men  and  Women,  the  '  fifty  poems  finished,' 
with  their  One  Word  Mors.  The  contents,  as  will  appear,  were 
later  distributed  under  other  titles.  Both  happiness  and 
sorrow  now  seem  to  check  Browning's  productiveness  ;  but 
the  Dramatis  Personam  of  1864,  the  first  volume  produced  after 
his  bereavement,  heightens  his  honours.  (4)  1868-9. — On  The 
Ring  and  the  Book  Browning  stands  or  falls  as  a  master  of  the 
long  poem  ;  it  extends  to  over  twenty -one  thousand  lines. 
(5)  1871-78. — The  scale  is  still  generous  though  not  so  vast. 


366  BROWNING 

The  works  that  follow  are  said  to  mark  a  decline  in  art,  but 
this  is  only  half -correct.  The  brains  doubtless  begin  to  over- 
power the  poetry  ;  but  there  is  a  blessed  new  store  of  poetry, 
as  well  as  of  analytic  and  narrative  gift.  This  period  may  be 
thus  subdivided  :  (a)  Three  volumes,  Balaustion's  Adventure 
(1871),  Aristophanes'  Apology,  and  The  Agamemnon  of  Mschylus 
are  Greek  in  theme  ;  the  first  two  each  contain,  and  the  third 
consists  of,  a  translated  play,  (b)  Two  disquisitions  in  metre, 
Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau  (1871)  and  Fifine  at  the  Fair 
(1872),  precede  two  criminal  stories  in  blank  verse,  Bed  Cotton 
Night-Cap  Country  (1873)  and  The  Inn  Album  (1875)  ;  and  in 
1878  comes  La  Saisiaz,  a  return  to  theology,  with  the  narrative 
Two  Poets  of  Croisic.  In  Pacchiarotto  (1876)  Browning  is 
already  reverting  to  the  shorter  poem,  and  to  this  form  he  now 
remains  faithful.  But  (6)  in  the  two  series,  1879  and  1880,  of 
Dramatic  Idyls  he  refreshes  in  a  striking  way  the  old  pattern  of 
the  '  dramatic  romance.'  Four  volumes  remain,  each  with  its 
own  unity  and  colouring.  These  are  Jocoseria  (1883),  Ferishtah's 
Fancies,  Parley ings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in  their 
Day,  and  the  posthumous  Asolando  (1890).  Here  the  good 
and  great  things  may  be  sparser,  but  there  is  the  old  range  and 
much  of  the  old  savour  ;  Brownings  lyric  force  is  never 
quenched  ;  and,  however  much  he  may  break  the  customs  and 
even  the  laws  of  poetry,  he  is  never  safe  against  his  own  genius  ; 
some  clues  to  which  may  now  be  indicated. 


II 

Shelley,1  the  '  Sun-Treader,'  had  only  been  ten  years  dead 
when  Browning,  a  youth  not  yet  of  age,  produced  his  Pauline, 
in  which  the  vague  flush  of  imagery  and  the  fervent  faintness  of 
outline  betray  the  ruling  influence.  Long  afterwards,  in  1852, 
Browning  described  the  poet  who  had  thus  quickened  his 
fancy.  Shelley,  he  says,  ranks  high  amongst  those  prophetic 
spirits,  of  the  '  subjective  '  kind,  who  do  not  merely  delineate 
life  and  their  own  minds  in  terms  that  appeal  to  mankind  at 
large,  but  who  see  all  things  transcendentally.     Such  a  spirit 

is  impelled  to  embody  the  thing  he  perceives,  not  so  much  with 
reference  to  the  many  below,  as  to  the  One  above  him,  the  supreme 
Intelligence  which  apprehends  all  things  in  their  absolute  truth, — an 
ultimate  view  ever  aspired  to,  if  but  partially  attained,  by  the  poet's 
own  soul.  Not  what  man  sees,  but  what  God  sees — the  Ideas  of 
Plato,  seeds  of  creation  lying  burningly  on  the  Divine  Hand — it  is 
towards  these  that  he  struggles. 


EARLIER  WORKS  367 

So,  Shelley's  '  noblest  and  predominating  characteristic  '  is 

his  simultaneous  perception  of  Power  and  Love  in  the  absolute,  and 
of  Beauty  and  Good  in  the  concrete,  while  he  throws,  from  the 
poet's  station  between  both,  swifter,  subtler,  and  more  numerous 
films  for  the  connexion  of  each  with  each,  than  have  been  thrown 
by  any  modern  artificer  of  whom  I  have  knowledge. 

This  indeed  is  '  seeing  Shelley  plain  '  ;  and  we  may  guess  that 
some  such  ambition  came  to  be  Browning's  own — namely  to 
interpret  this  earthly  show  of  '  men  and  women,'  with  their 
mental  histories,  in  the  light  of  that  loftier  reference  ;  so  that 
he  remained,  at  bottom,  a  theologian,  though  a  theologian 
sui  generis,  to  the  end.  In  the  same  essay  he  recognises  that 
the  '  subjective  '  and  '  objective  '  elements  may  be  variously 
mixed  in  one  man  ;  and  in  himself  they  were  thus  mixed. 
His  religion,  or  theodicy,  colours  his  whole  reading  of  life,  and 
interpenetrates  (to  use  a  word  of  Shelley's  own)  his  dramatic 
and  lyrical  studies.  We  may,  then,  safely  expect  to  watch  this 
union  of  elements  as  we  pace  once  more  the  long  gallery  of 
Browning's  works. 

In  Paracelsus  the  drawing  is  firmer,  and  the  execution  often 
splendid  to  the  point  of  extravagance.  But  the  whole  is  ill- 
shapen  and  diffuse,  and  afterwards  Browning  could  have 
packed  it  all  into  a  few  hundred  lines.  For  one  thing,  the 
outer  chronicle  of  the  real  Paracelsus,  a  true  herald  of  medicine 
and  chemistry  despite  his  philosophic  fantasies,  is  swamped 
by  the  fatally  allusive  style  of  narrative  ;  nor  is  it  clearly  con- 
nected with  the  mental  drama  which  is  the  true  subject. 
Paracelsus  aspires  to  know  nature  and  God,  and  to  help  man- 
kind. But  mankind  rejects  him,  and  he  is  baffled,  and  dies 
after  long  struggle  and  delirium.  Browning's  ideal  strain  is 
already  loud  and  clear,  and  there  is  remarkable  richness  in  the 
lyrics  ;  yet  all  is  unrelieved  and  superabundant.  Knowing 
the  event,in  Paracelsus  we  can  now  foresee  the  writer  of  A  Death 
in  the  Desert  or  Easter-Day,  but  not  the  writer  of  Pompilia  or 
of  Caliban  upon  Setebos. 

Few  genuine  poets  have  insulted  art  more  strenuously  than 
Browning  does  in  Sordello.  With  an  effort,  the  story  1  can  be 
made  out  ;  for  the  thing  has  been  done.  But  no  commentary 
and  no  undeniable  oases  can  redeem  Sordello.  Dante,  who  had 
set  the  figure  of  the  poet -patriot  in  the  clear  immortal  light  of 
his  Purgatory,  inspired  Browning,  but  failed  to  instruct  him. 
Browning  buried  himself  in  the  obscure  history  of  the  time, 
interwove   it   with  the   spiritual   drama,  treated   it   with   all 


368  BROWNING 

license,  and  so  hid  away  Sordelio  himself  in  a  dense  thicket  of 
allusion.  Sordelio  is  another  baffled  aspirant,  with  his  hungry 
mind  fixed  on  all  life  and  knowledge  for  its  prey.  At  last  he 
perishes  in  a  conflict  between  love  and  ambition.  The  con- 
re  ption  deserves  a  better  fate  ;  but  in  spite  of  the  flashes  of 
beauty  that  flit  over  the  scene  whenever  Palina ,  Sordello's  love, 
appears,  the  poem  suffocates  itself. 


Ill 

Like  Tennyson,  Browning  was  a  persistent  '  maker  of  plays,' 
but  was  never  to  conquer  the  theatre.  Strafford  was  staged  by 
Macreadjr,  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  by  Phelps,  and  Colombe's 
Birthday  by  Helen  Faucit  ;  these  pieces  and  more  have  been 
revived  by  enthusiasts.  But  the  question  to-day  is  how  the 
eight  dramas  read,  and  not  how  they  act.  In  each  one  of  them 
can  be  found  dramatic  material  and  dramatic  moments  ;  none 
of  them  lack  life,  or  poetry,  or  Browning's  natural  nobility  of 
accent.  Yet  hardly  one,  unless  it  be  Colombe's  Birthday,  is  a 
satisfactory  poem.  They  all  show  Browning  working  his  way 
through  drama  towards  monodrama,  which  is  his  real  field  ; 
and  in  which  he  was  meanwhile  triumphing  by  the  way.  Play- 
writing  disciplined  his  talent  and  taught  him  his  method. 

Strafford  is  full  of  energy  ;  and  though  it  begins  barely  and 
drily,  the  poetry  and  pathos  assert  themselves  in  the  final 
scenes,  where  Strafford  listens  to  the  singing  of  his  children 
before  he  finally  loses  faith  in  his  worthless  master.  The 
historians  repudiate  Browning's  Pym,  who  distracts  the  in- 
terest and  whose  speeches  little  justify  the  awestruck  allusions 
of  the  other  characters  to  his  voice  and  presence.  Still  we 
can  see  why  Macready  hailed  the  work,  in  the  lean  years  of  the 
drama.  Next  came  Pippa  Passes,  whose  lyrical  charm,  whose 
tragical  force,  it  may  seem  insensate  to  resist.  Browning,  no 
doubt,  must  have  all  the  honours  of  his  conception,  which  is 
unique.  The  little  holidaying  mill-girl,  as  we  know,  lets  herself 
dream  that  she  is  each  in  turn  of  '  Asolo's  Four  Happiest  Ones  '  : 
passes  the  window  of  each,  singing,  at  some  critical  instant  in 
the  fates  of  those  within  ;  awakens,  being  thus  overheard,  the 
remorse  or  resolve  of  each  overhearer,  so  changing  all  the  issues 
of  their  lives  ;  and,  on  the  last  occasion,  likewise  saves  herself, 
unawares,  from  an  infamy  contrived  against  her,  and  goes  to 
sleep  singing.  It  must  be  said  that  four  distinct  conversions 
give  us  some  pause  ;  as  for  one  or  two,  let  them  pass,  and  Pippa 
with  them.     But  we  are  to  think  that  the  child's  song  would 


PLAYS  369 

perturb  a  remarkably  tough  and  horny  Monsignore  while  he  is 
engaged  with  his  blackguard  agent  in  a  game  of  mutual  black- 
mail. No  doubt  we  are  outside  the  world  of  fact  all  the  time  ; 
but  here  there  is  something  too  hard  a  clash  between  the  worlds 
of  criminal  fiction  and  of  didactic  idyll.  It  is  true  that  in  the 
most  tragic  scene  of  all,  the  '  bright -infernal '  dialogue  of 
Ottima  and  Sebald  (which  reminds  us  of  Thomas  Middleton's 
dramas),  the  poetic  reason  is  convinced  ;  for  we  are  already 
well  prepared  for  the  violent  revulsion  of  Sebald  from  his 
paramour,  '  magnificent  in  sin  '  ;  and  Pippa's  singing,  quite 
credibly,  turns  the  scale. 

In  the  plays  that  followed  Browning  practised  many  styles  ; 
now,  in  King  Victor  and  King  Charles,  tracing  tortuous  intrigue 
and  policy,  in  language  very  curt  and  stripped  and  also  far  too 
allusive  ;  now,  in  The  Return  of  the  Druses  (a  much  plainer 
story)  bursting  into  impassioned  Eastern  figure,  and  striking 
out  lines  that  flash  like  the  sword  of  Anael  or  the  tiara  of  the 
Hakeem  ;  now,  in  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  improvising  a  poor 
violent  plot  which  repels  the  judgement,  and  for  which  the 
verse,  often  sweet  and  moving,  is  far  too  good.  The  young 
Tennysonian  English  girl,  Lady  Mildred,  has  been  betrayed  by 
the  young  Earl  Mertoun  ;  who,  loving  her  nevertheless  truly 
and  wishing  to  make  amends,  next  courts  her  openly,  with  the 
approval  of  her  family  ;  but  still,  incredibly,  visits  her  window 
in  the  night.  He  is  seen  by  her  heroic  brother  Tresham, 
who  kills  him  in  duel;  Mildred  dies,  Tresham  poisons  himself. 
Browning  disdained  to  invent  any  such  story  afterwards.  Very 
different  is  Colombe's  Birthday  ;  he  has  left  no  drama  better 
poised  or  plotted,  none  in  which  the  threads  of  romantic  and 
chivalrous  interest  are  more  nicely  interwoven.  It  might  be 
called  a  political  idyll.  The  verse  is  unusually  simple  and 
beautiful,  and  the  various  styles  of  poetic  eloquence  well 
match  the  speakers — Colombe,  Duchess  of  Cleves  and  Verviers, 
threatened  with  expulsion  under  the  Salic  law  ;  Berthold,  tjie 
claimant,  ambitious  and  unscrupulous,  capable  of  magnanimity 
but  not  of  love  ;  and  Valens,  the  advocate  of  Cleves,  the  winner 
at  last  of  the  Duchess  in  reward  for  his  loyalty  and  self-denial. 

Next  came  two  plays  of  historical  cast  but  not  founded  upon 
history.  In  A  SouVs  Tragedy  there  is  excellent  prose,  spoken 
by  the  legate  Ogmben,  who  is  a  sort  of  pocket  Machiavelli  ; 
and  there  is  also  one  of  Browning's  favourite  studies  in  slippery 
character.  But  there  is  not  enough  in  Chiappino  to  bear  up 
the  interest.  He  is  man  enough  to  be  ready  to  die  for  his 
friend  Luitolfo  by  shouldering  the  guilt  of  Luitolfo's  tyrannicide, 
vol.  i.  2  a 


370  BROWNING 

but  not  man  enough  to  forgo  the  profit  when  the  crime  proves 
to  be  glorious  and  popular.  In  Luria,  despite  the  number  of 
long-winded  speeches,  there  is  far  more  substance  and  imagina- 
tion. Luria  is  one  of  Browning's  more  heroic  figures,  and  as 
well  matched  with  his  adversary  Tiburzio,  as  Shakespeare's 
Coriolanus  is  with  Aufidius.  He  has  the  passionate  loyalty  of 
the  East  ;  his  magnanimity  is  coldly  used  and  betrayed  by  the 
city  of  Florence,  which  he  has  saved.  Her  treachery  breaks 
his  heart  and  he  takes  poison .  He  is  in  truth  done  to  death  by 
the  snake  Braccio  and  the  tigress  Domizia,  who  is  bent  on 
revenging  her  dead  brothers  upon  an  innocent  man.  There  is 
a  certain  deliberate  splendour  about  the  language  of  this  play, 
and  in  more  than  one  passage  can  be  heard  the  larger  Elizabethan 
style  ;  with  a  difference  indeed,  but  hardly  mistakeable  : 

Oh  world,  where  all  things  change  and  nought  abides, 

Oh  life,  the  long  mutation — is  it  so  ? 

Is  it  with  life  as  with  the  body's  change  ? 

— Where,  e'en  tho'  better  follow,  good  must  pass. 

Nor  manhood's  strength  can  mate  with  boyhood's  grace, 

Nor  age's  wisdom,  in  its  turn,  find  strength, 

But  silently  the  first  gift  dies  away, 

And  though  the  new  stays,  never  both  at  once. 


IV 

From  the  first  it  must  have  been  clear  to  the  wise,  though 
not  to  most  of  the  official  critics,  that  in  all  these  dramas  and 
lengthy  works  there  was  much  ore,  and  that  only  crushing  and 
refining — only  that,  but  an  infinite  deal  of  that — was  required  ; 
and  also  that  Browning,  in  his  shorter  poems,  had  achieved  the 
process  already.      Quite  early  he  had  begun  to  find  the  right 
shape  for  his  compositions.     Shape  mattered  even  more  than 
style,  because  it  usually  carried  style  along  with  it.     In  1836 
had  been  printed  the  two  poems  called  Madhouse  Cells ;  the 
first  of  them  being  Porphyria' s  Lover  and  the  second  Johannes 
Agricola    in    Meditation.     The    former    would    have    pleased 
Baudelaire  ;  and  Browning  was  always  to  like  a  clinical  subject. 
From  his  vantage-ground  of  healthy  sense  he  reached  out  a 
hand  of  lively  sympathy — dramatic  sympathy — towards  villainy, 
crime  and  craziness  of  all  kinds,  the  more  curious  and  piquant 
the  better.     Herein,  by  the  way,  lies  the  strength  of  his  much- 
deplored  '  optimism  '  ;  for  the  faith  that  could  survive  the  task 
of  creating  the  alchemist  in  The  Laboratory,  or  Guido  Franches- 
chini,  or  the  *  elder  man  '  in  The  Inn  Album,  is  proof  against 
anything  ;    and   such   a   writer  cannot    be   accused,  like  the 


BELLS  AND  POMEGRANATES  371 

sentimentalists,  of  not  facing  the  worst.  However,  in  his 
early  days  Browning  is  less  often  pathological  than  he  is  lyrical 
and  romantic. 

It  is  clear  now,  though  it  was  less  clear  at  the  time,  how 
safely  English  poetry  had  been  re-established  by  Tennyson  and 
Browning  by  the  year  1845.  The  third  and  seventh  bunches 
of  Bells  and  Pomegranates  l  comprise  but  thirty  odd  lyrical  or 
narrative  poems,  none  of  them  lengthy.  Many  of  Browning's 
future  powers  and  interests  are  here  nobly  represented.  The 
lyrics  are  not  all  stories,  but  the  stories  are  all  '  lyrical  ballads.' 
mostly  of  a  novel  kind.  Novel,  because  of  the  poet's  inveterate 
way  of  giving  an  extra  turn  to  the  ethical  screw.  He  must 
have  a  problem  in  casuistry  ;  must  dissect  the  behaviour  of  a 
man  in  some  crisis  that  is  just  too  strong,  or  just  not  too  strong, 
for  his  moral  resources.  This  habit  of  mind  is  seen  in  The 
Glove  ;  where  we  are  told  that  '  Peter  Ronsard  loquitur  '  ;  but 
that  poet  would  hardly  have  picked  the  story  thus  to  pieces,  or 
have  urged  that  a  true  lover  would  never  haye  thought  twice 
about  the  wanton  offence  of  his  lady  in  sending  him  into  the 
lion-pit  after  her  glove  ;  nor  would  he  afterwards  have  married 
the  knight  unhappily  to  a  king's  leman,  and  the  lady  happily  to 
a  page.  This  kind  of  question  Browning  was  to  canvass  more 
sternly  in  his  Dramatic  Idyls. 

Two  other  characteristics  are  prophesied  in  the  thirty  poems . 
First  of  all,  Browning  gives  a  fresh  turn  to  the  old  romantic 
and  rebel  mood  of  impatience.  Anything  to  be  free  !  The 
Flight  of  the  Duchess  is  an  expression  of  the  longing  for  escape 
which  is  heard  in  Youth  and  Art,  or  in  the  tale  of  Jules  and 
Phene.  Go  off  to  the  gypsies,  like  the  Duchess,  or  to  a  garret 
and  live  on  love,  or  to  '  some  unsuspected  isle  in  the  far  seas  !  ' 
Go  with  your  mate,  your  lover,  and  damn  the  consequences,  for 
'  God  s  in  his  Heaven  ! '  There  is  something  of  Blake  in  this  ; 
and  there  was  plenty  of  wild  sap  in  the  youthful  Browning, 
who  himself  ran  off  with  his  wife,  most  successfully.  The 
refinements  of  a  deep  and  serious  union,  the  '  silent  silver  lights 
and  darks  undreamed-of,'  are  subsequent  ;  Browning  is  their 
poet  also.  Secondly,  these  early  pieces  deal  much  in  the 
grotesque.  The  Boy  and  the  Angel,  with  its  pure  kind  of 
Tennysonian  beauty,  is  exceptional.  And  the  grotesque, 
whether  it  minister  to  the  sublime,  or  to  the  picturesque,  or 
simply  to  irony,  is  naturally  signalled  by  the  metre .  Browning's 
acrobatic  skill  in  queer  rhyming,  without  which  he  would  have 
missed  some  of  his  worst  failures  and  his  greatest  successes,  must 
have  encouraged  his  turn  for  the  grotesque.     It  is  purely  impish 


372  BROWNING 

and  childlike  in  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,  the  story  of  which 
he  found  in  his  father's  library,  in  Wanley's  Wonders  of  the 
Little  World.  The  scene  has  often  been  painted,  but  the 
rhymes  cannot  be  painted.  The  Soliloquy  of  th.e  Spanish 
Cloister  exhibits,  like  the  Memoir  of  Mark  Pattison,  the  un- 
couth and  fearful  joy  of  monastic  or  academic  hatreds. 
Sibratidus  Schafnaburgensis  is  pure  fun,  while  The  Englishman 
in  Italy,  though  not  exactly  grotesque,  is  homely  and  joyous, 
with  a  joy  like  that  of  treading  the  wine -vat,  and  the  rhymes 
lift  it  easily  into  the  higher  strain.  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess, 
with  its  somersaulting  verses  and  its  tumbles  into  rank  imagery, 
is  Browning's  greatest  feat  in  the  grotesque,  prior  to  Caliban 
upon  Setebos  ;  and  the  grotesque,  be  it  noted,  implies  not  absence 
of  form  but  precision  of  humorous  strangeness  in  form  ;  and  it 
need  not  exclude ,  though  it  is  content  to  do  without ,  the  beautiful . 
kSome  of  the  pieces  in  Bells  and  Pomegranates  cannot  be 
classified.  Waring  is  all  pictures  and  no  story,  a  lyrical  fantasy 
prompted  by  the  writer's  memories  of  his  friend,  Alfred  Domett, 
himself  a  poet  worth  reading.  Domett's  x  Ranolf  and  Amohia, 
A  South-Sea  Daydream  (1872)  contains  some  subtropical 
scenery  and  idyllic  passages  of  a  simple  beauty.  But  Waring 
also  embodies,  once  more,  the  desire  for  escape  with  no  certain 
bourne  in  view.  The  other  items  of  the  two  volumes  might  be 
set  in  a  kind  of  scale,  according  as  they  approach  more  or 
less  closely  to  pure  song.  The  resurgence  of  English  lyric  is 
assured  in  The  Lost  Mistress,  in  Meeting  at  Night,  and  in  '  Nay, 
but  you  who  do  not  love  her.'  The  Cavalier  Tunes,  Through  the 
Metidja  to  Abd-el-Kadr,  and  How  they  Brought  the  Good  News 
are  without  subtleties  ;  they  are  all  drums  and  horse-hoofs,  and 
are  all  magnificent.  In  Rudel  to  the  Lady  of  Tripoli  the  verse 
advances  soft  and  smooth  like  the  ship  that  bore  the  dying 
troubadour  to  his  lady.  Heine  had  already  touched  the 
story,  and  Carducci 2  was  to  tell  it  again  (1888)  ;  but  our 
reluctant  language,  which  could  yield  the  cadence  of 

The  far,  sad  •waters,  Angel,  to  this  nook  ! 

is  not  overmatched  even  by  the  vowelled  Italian  : 

— Contessa,  che  e  niai  la  vita  ? 
E  l'ombra  d'un  sogno  fuggentc. 
La  favola  breve  e  finita, 
II  vero  immortale  e  l'amor. 

Aprite  le  braccia  al  dolente. 
Vi  aspetto  al  novissimo  bando. 
Ed  or,  Melisenda,  accomando 
A  un  bacio  lo  spirto  che  muor. 


RELIGIOUS  VERSE  373 


After  four  years  of  silence  Browning  in.  1850  produced 
Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day,  his  fullest  though  not  his  final 
confession  of  faith.  It  was  the  year,  too,  of  In  Memoriam  ; 
and  a  few  years  earlier  Marian  Evans  had  translated  Strauss's 
Leben  Jesu,  and  Newman  had  published  his  Development  of 
Christian  Doctrine.  For  once  the  backwash  of  contemporary 
thought  reached  Browning.  Though  packed  with  curious 
lore,  he  seems  to  have  had  no  special  training  in  the  philosophy 
of  his  own  or  other  times.  Philosophy  ?  To  him  philosophy 
and  religion  were  all  but  the  same,  and  in  this,  if  in  little 
else,  he  was  mediae  vally -minded.  His  imagination  was  now 
touched  by  these  extremes  of  religion  which  he  knew  best,  the 
Protestant  in  its  densest  vulgarity,  and  the  Roman  at  the 
summit  of  its  ritual.  To  neither  of  these  is  he  bound,  and  his 
reason  reacts  against  them  both  ;  but  he  asks  what  is  their 
common  measure  and  saving  element,  and  finds  it  in  the  prin- 
ciple of  love.  But  love  is  absent,  or  only  a  phantom,  in  the 
cult  of  the  German  professor,  the  high  mild  enthusiast,  who 
worships  the  critical  destroying  reason  and  leaves  the  divinity 
and  almost  the  reality  of  Christ  a  myth.  Browning  writes  as 
if  there  could  be  no  religion  of  love  or  '  humanity  '  outside  the 
Christian  pale.  Christmas-Eve  is  a  poem  of  curious  mark  and 
workmanship.  The  three  scenes  of  the  chapel,  the  basilica, 
and  the  lecture-hall,  in  which  the  grotesque  and  the  sublime 
are  variously  blended,  are  bound  together,  partly  by  the 
reasonings,  and  partly  by  the  vision  of  Christ,  who  guides  the 
speaker,  either  in  the  body  or  the  spirit,  through  the  journey, 
and  upon  whose  figure  his  final  faith  and  love  converge.  In  the 
end  he  gets  back  to  the  chapel,  and  is  left  joining  humbly  in  the 
hymn.  The  pictures  of  the  moon-rainbow  and  of  the  mass 
are  among  Browning's  greatest.  That  of  the  meeting-house  is 
in  the  most  vivid  of  doggerel,  and  this  element  is  allowed  to 
infect  the  whole  work.  Much  of  Christmas-Eve  is  religion  in 
Hudibrastics — with  many  a  touch,  it  is  true,  of  Christabel 
thrown  in.  Easter-Day  is  in  level  short  couplets,  with  hardly  a 
touch  of  oddity,  and  with  one  burst  of  splendour — the  vision 
of  judgement  that  gives  the  key  to  the  poem.  In  the  main 
dialogue  two  nameless  speakers  argue  and  instruct  each 
other  ;  it  is  not  too  clear  whether  they  express  the  poet's  own 
conviction  or  a  more  or  less  dramatic  mood.  The  tone  is  not 
catholic  and  comprehensive  as  in  Christmas -Eve,  but  exclusive 
and  austeie.     Even  the  soundest  joys  of  earth  and  the  highest 


V 


374  BROWNING 

thoughts  of  man  are  subordinate  to  the  single -minded  service 
of  God.  Yet  these  solicitations  of  humanity,  it  is  conceded, 
are  steeped  from  the  first  in  the  principle  of  love  ;  for  they  too 
are  '  service.'  For  the  later  forms  of  Browning's  theology  we 
turn  to  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  A  Death  in  the  Desert,  Abt  Vogler,  and 
La  Saisiaz  ;  and  there,  though  essentially  the  same,  his  faith 
and  '  optimism  '  are  less  rigidly  exacting.  The  bareness,  or 
blankness,  of  style  which  marks  many  of  them  is  prefigured  in 
Raster- Day. 

VI 

In  that  Monte  Cristo  cave-treasure,  the  volumes  of  1855 
entitled  Men  and  Women,  all  Browning's  former  gifts  and 
themes  reappear,  now  greatly  enriched  and  varied.  Every 
poem  in  them  would  deserve,  but  shall  not  here  receive,  a  review. 
Classification,  too,  is  difficult  ;  nor  can  Browning's  own  be 
pressed.  The  Men  and  Women  of  1855  consist  of  the  '  fifty 
poems  finished '  together  with  the  dedication  One  Word  More. 
But  these,  in  1863,  were  combined  with  the  non-dramatic  pieces 
taken  from  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  and  the  collection  thus 
formed  was  sifted  out  under  the  three  classes  of  '  dramatic 
lyrics,'  of  '  dramatic  romances,'  and  lastly  of  '  men  and  women  ' 
in  the  narrower  sense.  Only  twelve  poems  (afterwards  in- 
creased by  one)  now  bore  that  title,  most  of  them  being  dramatic 
monologues  which  are  neither  primarily  lyrical  nor  narrative. 
But  the  distribution  could  not  be  strict  ;  nor  does  Browning's 
poetry  ever  fit  well  into  departments.  My  Last  Duchess 
figures  among  '  romances,'  but  it  belongs  to  '  men  and  women  ' 
every  whit  as  much  as  the  Epistle  of  Karshish.  Mesmerism  and 
The  Last  Ride  Together  are  also  called  romances,  but  if  a  romance 
must  be  a  story,  they  have  not  much  story.  The  lyric  Rudel  is 
placed,  on  the  other  hand,  amongst  the  twelve  '  men  and 
women.'  I  shall  not  keep  to  Browning's  classes,  but  only 
seek  to  trace  one  or  two  of  the  patterns  that  run  through  the 
whole  shining  fabric  of  his  verse  up  to  this  date. 

His  deliberate  queerness,  to  begin  with,  is  as  rampant  as 
ever,  and  it  has  to  find  fresh  excuses  for  existing.  In  Holy-Cross 
Day  it  is  a  foil  to  the  solemnity  of  the  concluding  march.  In 
The  Heretic's  Tragedy  it  is  there  chiefly  to  enjoy  itself — an 
excellent  reason.  In  A  Grammarian's  Funeral  the  grotesque 
is  used  in  the  service  of  grandeur.  The  rhyming  feats  (cock- 
crow, rock  row  ;  fabric,  dab  brick)  echo  the  broken  step  of  the 
climbers,  and  also  their  recital,  half -defiant,  half -affectionate, 


MEN  AND  WOMEN  375 

of  the  dead  scholar's  purposes,  in  the  world's  eye  so  puerile. 
The  poem  presages  the  gaunter  style  of  Dramatis  Personam,  and 
the  Grammarian  ennobles  the  gospel  of  minute  '  research  '  as 
surely  as  George  Eliot's  caricature  of  it  in  her  Mr.  Casaubon 
leaves  that  faith  piteous  and  futile.  The  doggerel  in  Old 
Pictures  in  Florence  denotes,  I  suppose,  a  snap  of  the  fingers 
at  the  world's  forgetfulness  of  the  good  obscure  painters  who 
have  thought  only  of  the  work  and  not  of  the  praise.  And  in 
A  Pretty  Woman  half  the  bitterness  against  the  soulless  beauty 
of  the  lady  would  be  missed,  without  the  touch  of  oddness  and 
the  slippery  dexterous  dactyls  : 

Shall  we  burn  up,  tread  that  face  at  once 

Into  tinder 

And  so  hinder  ■-'■ 

Sparks  from  kindling  all  the  place  at  once  ? 

Or  else  kiss  away  one's  soul  on  her  ? 

Your  love-fancies  ! 

— A  sick  man  sees 
Truer,  when  his  hot  eyes  roll  on  her  ! 

These  effects  are  not  rare  in  Browning's  love-poetry,  which  is 
endless  in  variety,  and*  in  which  he  breaks  away  from  all 
tradition.  No  abandoned  romanticist,  he  well  knows,  like 
Johnson  and  Shakespeare,  that  '  love  is  but  one  of  many 
passions  '  ;  his  grammarian,  his  rabbi,  his  saints,  stand  out- 
side love  in  the  ordinary  sense.  Still,  his  own  hopes  for  man- 
kind, and  much  of  his  religious  faith,  are  heavily  staked  upon 
his  gospel  of  love.  Were  that  to  prove  illusory,  what  would 
be  left  of  the  '  optimist '  ?  Once,  late  in  life,  in  Ferishtah's 
Fancies,  he  shivers  at  such  a  possibility  : 

Only,  at  heart's  utmost  joy  and  triumph,  terror 

Sudden  turns  the  blood  to  ice :   a  chill  wind  disencharms 

All  the  late  enchantment !     What  if  all  be  error — 
If  the  halo  irised  round  my  head  were,  Love,  thine  arms  ? 

This  is  only  a  mood  ;  Browning  seldom  betrays  a  doubt  about 
the  revelation  of  love,  a  subject  on  which  he  muses  with 
all  possible  sympathy  and  curiosity,  concerning  himself  with 
strange  cases  and  conjectures,  and  like  Meredith  returning  to 
the  notion  that  love  is  not  only  man's  chief  happiness  but  his 
chief  ordeal.  Some  of  these  poems  are  rapidly  flashed  pictures, 
like  Meeting  at  Night  and  My  Star.  Some  of  the  most  deeply 
considered  give  the  feminine  point  of  view  ;  in  A  Woman's 
Last  Word  and  Any  Wife  to  Any  Husband  there  is  the  tone  of 
piercing  sadness  and  resignation.     Some  turn  on  a  favourite 


376  BROWNING 

idea,  the  capture  or  loss  of  the  mystical  moment,  the  one 
chance,  by  which  the  union  of  spirits  may  be  sealed.  In 
Cristina  (1842)  the  chance  is  caught  but  lost  again,  as  it  is 
in  Two  in  the  Campagna.  In  A  Lovers'  Quarrel  it  is  triumph- 
antly recaptured.  In  The  Statue  and  the  Bust  it  slips  away 
through  cowardice  ;  in  Respectability  the  world  is  defied  and 
happiness  gained,  through  courage.  By  the  Fireside  reveals  the 
secret  won  :  '  the  forests  had  done  it  '  ;  and  this  poem  may 
reflect,  as  One  Word  More  avowedly  does,  a  personal  experience. 
Browning  did  not  love  only  in  verse,  or  by  dramatic  sympathy  ; 
much  of  his  best  writing  of  this  kind  dates  from  his  married 
life.  In  Love  Among  the  Ruins,  one  of  his  securest  masterpieces, 
the  sight  of  the  old  relics,  and  the  vision  of  the  dead  fighters 
and  charioteers,  do  not  (as  in  some  poem  of  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy's 
they  might,  just  as  convincingly,  do)  lay  a  cold  hand  on  the 
lover  ;  but  they  make  his  happiness  seem  the  compensation 
('  Earth's  returns  ')  for  those  departed  splendid  vanities. 

These  love -poems,  now  more  than  half  a  century  old,  last 
perfectly  well.  They  have  no  model,  they  are  all  quite  different , 
and  their  handicraft  is  usually  consummate.  They  are  '  con- 
cise and  perfect  work.'  There  are  rough  edges  to  them,  but 
there  is  no  untidy  dust  or  surplusage  ;  and  they  sound,  despite 
the  poet's  peculiar  idiom,  like  natural  speech  ;  verse  propagating 
verse,  as  it  does  in  Shakespeare,  and  the  poem  never  seeming  to 
be  thought  out  beforehand.  Browning  likes  to  invent  measures, 
especially  curt  abrupt  ones,  which  have  this  air  of  unstudied 
impassioned  speech  shaking  itself  without  effort  into  rhyme  : 

When  I  sewed  or  drew, 

I  recall 
How  he  looked  as  if  I  sung, 

— Sweetly  too. 
If  I  spoke  a  word, 

First  of  all 
Up  his  cheek  the  colour  sprung, 

Then  he  heard. 

More  intricate  are  the  fervent  and  lovely  chimes  of  Women  and 
Roses.  But  at  whichever  end  we  begin,  whether  with  the 
impassioned  thought  or  with  the  technique,  we  reach  the 
same  point  of  fusion  between  them.  How  often  we  are 
launched  on  the  music  of  Swinburne  and  reach  no  thought  at 
all,  and  how  often,  by  the  later  Browning,  we  are  launched  on 
the  thought  and  find  no  right  expression  for  it  !  But  that  is 
no  matter,  when  he  has  left  us  the  '  fifty  poems  finished.' 
Most  of  the  thirteen  pieces  finally  styled  Men  and  Women  are 


MEN  AND  WOMEN  377 

in  blank  verse,  which  is  of  no  uniform  pattern.  Joyous  and 
free  in  Fra  hippo  Lippi,  it  is  faint  and  dreamy  and  loth  to 
finish  in  Andrea  del  Sarto,  while  in  The  Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb 
it  is  broken  and  tessellated.  Blank  verse  is  a  kind  of  standard 
medium  for  the  dramatic  monologue,  a  form  in  which  Tennyson 
and  Rossetti  and  others  excelled,  but  of  which  Browning  is 
the  master.  It  is  an  exacting  form,  because  it  has  the  air  of  a 
speech  taken  out  of  a  play  ;  but  then  there  is  no  play,  and  the 
speech  itself  has  to  tell  the  whole  story,  and  also  to  reveal  the 
character  of  other  persons  beside  the  speaker  ;  and  it  has, 
finally,  to  sound  natural.  In  Andrea  del  Sarto,  called  *  The 
Faultless  Painter,'  which  is  all  silver-grey  and  pathos,  this  feat 
is  accomplished.  Andrea  is  resigned  at  once  to  the  doom  of  a 
too  perfect  finish  in  his  art,  and  to  the  faithlessness  of  the  wife- 
model  whose  love,  had  it  existed,  might  have  made  of  him  a 
Raphael.  Cleon,  a  new  kind  of  '  Hellenic,'  in  which  the  verse 
is  remarkably  stately  and  finished,  has  its  pathos  too,  and  its 
problem  :  Can  the  pagan  artist,  in  his  old  age,  live  merely  on 
his  fame,  and  also  on  his  sharpened  sympathy  with  the  youthful 
life  which  he  cannot,  in  the  flesh,  enjoy  ?  Cleon  dreams  of 
'  some  future  state  revealed  to  us  by  Zeus,'  and  has  heard  of  the 
insane  doctrine  on  the  subject  preached  by  one  Christus  and  one 
Paulus,  who  are  perhaps  the  same  person.  A  similar  idea  is 
developed  in  The  Strange  Experience  of  Karshish.  Here  the 
Eastern  scenery  and  detail  are  given  with  extraordinary  gusto, 
and  the  '  transformation  of  all  values  '  in  the  mind  of  the  risen 
Lazarus  is  described  in  Browning's  subtlest  style.  One  of  the 
most  finished  of  these  monologues  is  How  it  Strikes  a  Contem- 
porary ;  it  is  intensely  coloured,  and  every  stroke  tells  ;  and 
above  all  it  is  short,  like  My  Last  Duchess.  The  '  contemporary  ' 
is  the  man  in  the  street  at  Valladolid  ;  what  '  strikes  '  him  is 
the  figure  of  a  poet,  a  kind  of  Browning,  who  sees  everything 
and  says  nothing,  and  who  becomes  the  legend  and  (unlike 
Browning)  the  terror  of  the  place.  The  full  savour  of  the  verse 
is  felt  in  lines  like  these  : 

We  merely  kept  a  governor  for  form, 

While  this  man  walked  about  and  took  account 

Of  all  thought,  said  and  acted,  then  went  home, 

And  wrote  it  fully  to  our  Lord  the  King 

Who  has  an  itch  to  know  things,  he  knows  why. 

And  reads  them  in  his  bed-room  of  a  night. 

Bishop  Blovgram's  Apology  is  mostly  written  in  a  style 
which  does  not  encourage,  though  it  does  not  quite  exclude, 
poetry.     Blougram  is  the  half-believing  cleric  who  builds  an 


378  BROWNING 

argumentative  house  of  cards  in  order  to  warrant  his  retention 
of  his  stall  and  his  '  sphere  of  usefulness.5  The  figure  is  partially 
modelled  on  that  of  Wiseman,1  who  reviewed  Browning  in  the 
Rambler  and  dealt  him  a  coup  de  palte.  which  rather  misses  its 
'  If  Mr.  Browning  is  a  man  of  will  and  action,  and  not 
a  mere  dreamer  and  talker,  we  should  never  feel  surprise  at 
his  conversion.'  The  poem  is  too  long,  and  anticipates  the 
pedestrian  blank  verse  of  the  poet's  later  years,  and  also  his 
fondness  for  presenting  the  sophistical  case  on  the  lips  of  an 
ambiguous  or  shady  personage.  All  these,  he  says,  are  '  utter- 
ances of  so  many  imaginary  persons,  and  not  mine  '  ;  all,  that 
is,  except  the  One  Ward  More  addressed  to  his  wife,  a  poem 
written  in  London,  but  Italian  in  scenery,  and  moulded,  for 
once,  upon  the  pure  line  and  colouring  of  Italian  verse. 


VII 

In  Dramatis  Personal,  which  came  out  in  1864,  three  years 
after  Browning's  bereavement,  there  is  a  sharper  irony,  a 
harder  realism,  and  a  higher  grandeur  than  before.  The 
language  is  stiffer  and  more  elliptical ;  there  are  more  monosyl- 
labic lines,  harsh  knots  of  consonants,  and  jingling  internal 
rhymes.  These  devices,  which  became  the  prey  of  the  parodist , 
are  used  mostly  in  the  interest  of  bitterness,  just  as  Shakespeare's 
'  puns,'  on  the  lips  of  Queen  Margaret  or  Lady  Macbeth,  give 
the  effect  of  a  mock  grin  or  rictus.  The  more  cheerful  variety 
of  this  style  is  seen  in  Dis  aliter  Visum,  thus  : 

A  match  'twixt  me,  bent,  wigged  and  lamed, 

Famous,  however,  for  verse  and  worse, 
Sure  of  the  Fortieth  spare  Arm-chair 

When  gout  and  glory  seat  me  there, 
So,  one  whose  love-freaks  pass  unblamed. 

This  maturer  form  of  Browning's  grotesqueness  recurs  in  A 
Likeness,  in  Youth  and  Art,  and  in  the  Morgue-poem  Apparent 
Failure.  Another  variety  of  it  pervades  Mr.  Sludge,  the 
Medium,  in  which  the  poet  relieves  his  mind  of  his  cherished 
disgust  at  the  practices  which  had  impressed  Mrs.  Browning. 
The  poem  would  bear  separately  reprinting  to-day  (1920),  when 
there  is  a  recrudescence  of  Sludge.  In  Caliban  upon  Setebos,  a 
religious  satire,  eccentricity  of  form  is  used  in  yet  another  spirit, 
and  the  effect  is  so  good  as  to  make  us  forget  that  Shakespeare's 
'  monster  '  is  not  eccentric  at  all,  but  acts  and  thinks  quite 
naturally,  according  to  monster-law.     Browning's  grotesquerie, 


DRAMATIS  PERSONA  379 

however,  is  usually  well  employed  ;  it  is  like  some  odd-shaped 
cactus,  full  of  bristles,  and  more  expressive  than  beautiful,  but 
sometimes  breaking,  for  the  benefit  of  the  connoisseur,  into  a 
morbid,  red,  and  startling  blossom.  The  most  highly  wrought 
poem  of  this  class  is  James  Lee's  Wife,  a  series  of  nine  monologues, 
addressed  to  the  fickle  husband,  all  staccato  in  diction,  but  all 
charged  with  beauty  and  pathos.  None  of  these  poems  is 
theological,  except  Caliban.  The  Worst  of  It  and  Too  Late  are 
purely  human  and  dramatic.  Others  partly  depend  for  their 
value  on  the  argument. 

And  in  one  of  these  the  argument  is  monstrous .  Gold  Hair  : 
A  Story  of  Pornic  tells  of  the  Breton  girl  with  the  wonderful 
tresses,  massed  by  her  own  hand  so  strangely  on  her  deathbed 
and  by  her  request  interred  with  her  untouched.  A  piece,  it 
might  seem,  of  touching  vanity  ;  but  no,  one  of  the  Seven  Sins 
was  behind  it  !  The  coffin,  opened  long  afterwards,  was  found 
to  be  full  of  gold  coins  which  had  been  hoarded  in  the  hair. 
'  Why  I  deliver  this  horrible  verse  ? '  inquires  the  poet  of  himself. 
Why,  because  the  Christian  faith,  which  had  been  recently 
attacked  in  print,  was  the  first  or  the  only  faith  that  '  taught 
Original  Sin,  The  Corruption  of  Man's  Heart.'  Monstrous, 
I  repeat.  Such  a  conclusion  requires  at  least  the  sin  of  a  Judas 
or  a  Guido  Franceschini  to  plead  for  it.  Browning,  well  as  he 
tells  his  tale,  tells  it  like  any  naif  old  priest — not,  indeed,  like 
the  priest  in  the  poem  who  built  an  altar  out  the  proceeds  of 
the  coffin-gold.  The  spectre  of  nineteenth -century  criticism 
also  haunts,  rather  unfairly,  the  last  hours  of  St .  John,  in  A  Death 
in  the  Desert ;  but  that  poem  is  a  noble  statement  of  Browning's 
conception  of  human  progress,  as  at  once  limited  and  advanced 
by  the  conditions  of  this  life.  The  turn  of  the  language  often 
recalls  Tennyson,  as  we  feel  in  such  lines  as 

Stung  by  the  splendour  of  a  sudden  thought 
or 

Like  the  lone  desert-bird  that  wears  the  ruff, 

and  in  the  stateliness  of  the  whole  movement  of  the  verse. 

With  Swinburne's  Hertha,  Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  metaphysical  poem  of  his  generation.  Its 
power  lies  in  the  expression  of  a  lofty  austere  ideal  by  means  of 
a  series  of  dazzling  and  glowing  images.  The  wisdom  of  age 
recovers  the  poetry  though  not  the  pulse  of  youth.  The  loss 
of  youth  and  of  its  joy  is  repaid  by  an  increase  of  vision,  and 
of  the  power  to  use  the  memories  of  youth  for  the  ends  of  the 
soul.     Life  has  lasted  long  enough  for  the  Divine  Potter  to 


380  BROWNING 

finish  the  cup  that  he  is  moulding  ;  and  therefore,  '  let  death 
complete  the  same  ' : 

Look  not  thou  down  but  up  ! 

To  uses  of  a  cup, 
The  festal  board,  lamp's  flash  and  trumpet's  peal, 

The  new  wine's  foaming  flow, 

The  Master's  lips  aglow  ! 
Thou,  heaven's  consummate  cup,  what  need'st  thou  with  earth's  wheel  ? 

Music  is  yet  another  avenue  to  the  apprehension  of  goodness 
and  beauty  ;  this  idea  is  set  forth  in  Alt  Vogler,  with  its  heavily 
undulating  harmonies,  in  which  Browning's  powers  of  lyrical 
execution  are  seen  at  their  utmost  pitch.  The  whole  volume, 
Dramatis  Persona,  marks  the  summit  of  his  speculative  verse, 
just  as  the  volume  of  Men  and  Women  shows  to  the  full  his 
mobility  and  humanity.  But  his  power  to  compose  a  big 
poem,  dramatic  in  quality  though  not  in  form,  is  tested  for  the 
first  and  last  time  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book.1 

Browning  had  already  produced  many  wonderful  short  pieces 
and  some  unsatisfactory  long  ones.  He  had  written  of  love  and 
religion,  of  painting  and  music,  and  of  Italy.  He  had  enlarged 
the  scope  of  the  poetical -grotesque.  He  had  played  at  his  ease 
upon  the  instrument  of  blank  verse  for  the  purposes  of  narrative, 
description,  and  reasoning.  Where,  then,  should  he  display  all 
these  powers  and  interests  at  once,  and  uncramped,  and  on  the 
greater  scale  ?  Where  find  what  Tennyson  had  failed  to  find 
in  Arthur,  and  what  Morris  was  almost  to  find  in  Sigurd,  a 
subject  that  was  not  only  great  in  itself,  but  great  for  him  ? 
Was  he  only  to  be  remembered  for  those  wonderful  short 
things  ? 

VIII 

Browning,  at  any  rate,  was  sure  that  he  had  found  his 
subject  in  the  little  '  yellow  book  '  describing  the  old  Roman 
murder  case  of  the  year  1697.  The  book  is  a  sheaf  of  documents 
partly  in  print  and  part  in  manuscript.  They  are  in  Latin  and 
Italian,  official  and  unofficial,  pro  and  con  ;  a  chance-collection 
of  papers,  precious  but  incomplete,  made  by  somebody,  and  in 
no  other  sense  a  book.  One  other  pamphlet,  outside  this 
sheaf,  Browning  found  and  used  also.  The  broken-down  Count 
Guido  Franceschini  of  Arezzo,  after  committing  many  other 
villainies,  murdered  his  wife  Pompilia,  aged  seventeen,  and  her 
parents  the  old  Comparini  couple.  In  defence  he  urged  her 
adultery  (the  appearance  of  which  he  had  himself  contrived) 
with  the  priest,  Giuseppe  Caponsacchi,  who  in  fact  had  helped 


THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK  381 

her  at  an  earlier  date  to  fly  from  the  house  of  torture  :  an  affair 
dealt  with  indecisively  in  a  previous  lawsuit.  The  '  book  ' 
contains  the  pleas  and  counterpleas  of  counsel ;  summaries  of 
evidence  on  either  side,  including  oral  depositions  by  Pompilia, 
Caponsacchi,  and  others  ;  the  official  sentence  on  Guido,  who 
was  duly  convicted,  and,  upon  the  rejection  of  his  appeal  by 
Pope  Innocent  the  Twelfth,  executed  ;  and  further,  some 
irresponsible  unsigned  tracts  written  on  behalf  of  either  side. 
This  was  Browning's  lump  of  ore  ;  and  in  one  of  his  liveliest 
pages  he  tells  how  he  found  it  on  a  Roman  bookstall,  mused  on 
it,  moulded  it,  refined  it,  and  after  four  years  of  labour  spurted 
on  it  the  final  acid,  so  driving  out  the  alloy, 

Till,  justifiably  golden,  rounds  my  ring  : 

— the  Ring,  which  receives  its  ;  posy  '  of  dedication  to  lik 
'  lyric  love,"  now  for  seven  years  lost  to  him  on  earth. 

The  old  book  gives  the  story  from  sundry  points  of  view  ; 
which  the  poet  increases  to  eleven  or  twelve,  weaving  in 
hundreds  of  scattered  details  from  the  record.  But  he  finds 
that  neither  in  book  nor  poem  can  such  a  story,  or  any  story, 
ever  be  truly  told.  Not  the  passionless  Pope,  not  the  author, 
can  ever  say  the  last  word.  The  eleven  versions  offered  are  all 
colourable,  but  they  are  incompatible.  So  we  see  that  truth  is 
elusive — that  is,  man's  truth  ;  only  by  walking  round  it,  by 
watching  facet  after  facet  of  it,  can  we  see,  and  then  in  outline, 
God's  truth,  concerning  that  far-off  Newgate  episode.  This 
eternal  truth  is,  indeed,  roughly  recognised  by  human  justice, 
and  countersigned  by  the  official  deputy  of  God  upon  earth. 
But  again  ;  such  justice,  though  it  may  do  its  work  at  the 
time,  cannot  restore  Pompilia,  nor  can  it  keep  alive  her  memory, 
which  is  buried  away  in  the  old  yellow  papers.  So  it  is  for  the 
poet  to  requicken  the  story  ;  and  had  art,  he  thinks,  ever  a 
rarer  enterprise — art,  which  does  not  simply  republish,  but 
which  also  illuminates  ?  Such  appears  to  be  the  train  of  thought 
that  led  Browning  to  invent  his  peculiar  method.  Henry 
James  l  sketched  the  story  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  as  a  possible 
novel,  with  Caponsacchi  for  the  central  figure  ;  it  remains  for 
some  one  to  conceive  it  as  a  play.  It  would  be,  I  think,  a  play 
in  which  prose  and  verse  were  mingled. 

For  six  out  of  the  eleven  narratives  are  prosaic  in  their  very 
intention  ;  they  are  on  the  strictly  mundane  level,  giving  the 
gossip  of  Home,  or  else  the  bare  lawyer-facts  of  the  case  as 
discoloured  by  law3'er-rhetoric .  The  sections  entitled  '  Half - 
Rome,'  '  The  Other  Half-Rome,' '  Tertium  Quid;  and  '  The  Book 


382  BROWNING 

and  the  Ring  '  are  built  up  from  the  scattered  documents  ; 
while  the  speeches  of  the  two  counsel  are  taken,  often  verbally 
and  consecutively,  Latin  tags  and  all,  from  their  originals. 
The  employment  of  verse  for  this  kind  of  work  raises  curious 
questions.  No  doubt  it  is  the  verse  that  carries  us  through, 
where  prose  might  have  wearied  us — quod  lucro  ponatur,  as 
Dominus  Hyacinthus  might  have  said  ;  but  then  the  result  is 
neither  poetry  nor  prose,  but  something  between,  with  rights 
of  its  own  certainly,  but  yielding  a  mixed  kind  of  pleasure. 
One  of  the  depositions,  that  of  the  serving -maid  who  describes 
the  horrors  of  Guido's  household,  is  put  into  the  level  kind  of 
verse  afterwards  used  in  The  Inn  Album.  Perhaps  the  true 
justification  of  this  method  is  the  picture  which  is  built  up  before 
us,  touch  by  touch,  of  the  hard  old  cruel  Roman  world,  with 
its  jokes  and  flying  scandal  and  its  taste  in  oratory,  and  which 
also  serves  for  background  for  the  redeeming  figures  of  the  girl 
and  the  priest  and  the  Pope. 

There  remain  the  speeches  of  these  three,  and  also  the  two 
speeches  of  Guido.  The  yellow  book,  which  is  mostly  bare 
enough  in  its  diction,  shows  unusual  feeling  when  it  comes  to 
chronicle  the  witness  borne  by  those  who  saw  Pompilia's  last 
hours.  These  persons  were  greatly  moved  by  her  patience  and 
goodness  ;  and  here,  perhaps,  is  the  germ  of  the  poet's  exalted 
reading  of  her  character.  Pompilia's  own  deposition  in  the 
'  book  '  is  a  plain  tale  told  with  dignity  ;  she  just  lives  long 
enough  to  tell  it,  and  dies  leaving  her  infant  of  two  months 
behind  her.  She  had  heard,  she  depones,  that  Caponsacchi  was 
a  '  resolute  '  man,  and  had  gone  to  him  as  a  last  hope. 
Browning  said  that  he  had  found  all  of  his  Pompilia  '  in  the 
book.'  In  fact,  he  embodies  everything  in  the  book — her 
childish  shifts  and  rages,  her  drugging  of  Guido  and  drawing  of 
the  sword  upon  him  ;  but  he  also  softens  and  glorifies  it  all ; 
with  some  loss,  it  may  be,  of  the  convincing  effect  of  the  real 
Pompilia's  story.  More  safely,  he  widens  her  vision  and  in- 
telligence out  of  all  recognition,  making  her  love  for  the  un- 
born or  just  born  Gaetano  the  mainspring  of  her  action. 

He  also  invents  the  purged  and  spiritual  love  between 
Pompilia  and  Caponsacchi,  by  which  an  average  light  ecclesi- 
astic is  turned  into  a  St.  George  or  a  Perseus.  The  description 
of  this  new  birth  of  Caponsacchi,  when  he  first  sees  Pompilia 
with  her  '  great,  grave,  griefrul  air,'  standing  at  her  window, 
is  one  of  Browning's  achievements.  The  unlettered  Roman 
girl  becomes  the  voice  of  his  ideal  conception  of  marriage, 
which  is  so  often  expounded  by  him,  but  never  in  simpler 


THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK  383 

or  higher  terms.  As  for  Guido,  he  does  not  speak  at  all  in 
the  yellow  documents,  except  through  the  lips  of  partisans 
and  lawyers.  Here,  then,  Browning  was  unfettered.  Still, 
the  sophistry  of  Guido 's  first  oration  in  the  poem  is  quite  in 
keeping  with  the  facts.  Nor  is  there  in  the  yellow  book  any 
word  uttered  by  the  Pope  ;  there  is  only  his  signature.  In 
the  poem  he  reviews  the  case,  confirms  the  sentence,  makes  his 
own  last  account  with  heaven,  and  becomes  the  spokesman  of 
something  like  Browning's  own  theology.  He  also  becomes 
by  the  way  a  considerable  satirist  and  poet.  He  shows  plenty 
of  irony  and  scorn  before  he  reaches,  not  too  soon,  his  superb 
coronation  of  Pompilia  and  of  the  '  warrior -priest.'  He 
becomes,  in  truth,  Dantesque  : 

Such  denizens  o'  the  cave  now  cluster  round 

And  heat  the  furnace  sevenfold  ;   time  indeed 

A  bolt  from  heaven  should  cleave  roof  and  clear  place, 

Transfix  and  show  the  world,  suspiring  flame, 

The  main  offender,  scar  and  brand  the  rest, 

Hurrying,  each  miscreant  to  his  hole  :   then  flood 

And  purify  the  scene  with  outside  day — 

Which  yet,  in  the  absolutist  drench  of  dark, 

Ne'er  wants  a  witness,  some  stray  beauty-beam 

To  the  despair  of  hell. 

The  whole  poem  culminates  in  the  Pope's  last  words  ;  he  sees 
no  chance  for  Guido  save  in  some  unlikely  miracle  that  may 
bring  him  to  '  see,  one  instant,  and  be  saved.'  But  Browning's 
next  great  stroke  is  to  risk  an  anti -climax  and  also  escape  it,  by 
following  at  once  with  the  second  speech,  the  great  eruption, 
of  Guido,  now  condemned,  a  lost  but  shameless  soul.  The  old 
document  assigns  a  much  more  edifying  end  to  Guido,  but  the 
poet  will  have  none  of  that.  Then,  with  another  deliberate 
drop,  he  adds  a  satiric  epilogue  ;  but  at  the  end  he  recovers, 
and  delivers  his  mind  on  the  vital  mission  of  the  artist,  the 
ring -maker,  the  truth -refiner,  such  as  he  has  tried  to  prove 
himself.  Once  we  grasp  this  bold  and  successful  arrangement 
of  the  sections  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  we  can  imagine  no 
other. 

When  all  is  said,  it  is  one  of  the  best,  and  not  merely  one  of 
the  strangest,  poems  of  the  last  century.  It  is  not  in  the  Latin 
taste  ;  the  architecture  is  too  eccentric,  the  ornament  is  too 
profuse  and  whimsical  for  that.  Our  ancestors  would  have 
called  it  a  Gothic  production.  But  we  must  leave  Browning 
his  own  plan.  His  true  subject  is  the  contrast  between  Heaven 
and  Hell,  with  the  world's  voices  clamouring  all  around  them 


384  BROWNING 

and  confounding  their  borders.  And  his  performance,  at  its 
best,  is  very  high  ;  the  language  soars  up,  or  rages  down 
below,  without  ceasing  to  be  the  voice  of  humanity,  or  of 
poetry. 

IX 

Browning,  now  enamoured  of  the  long  verse  apologia, 
practised  it  steadily  for  some  years  more.  He  became  for 
a  while  a  kind  of  metrical  Balzac.  He  much  admired  the 
creator  of  Vautrin  and  of  Louis  Lambert.  He  has  the  same 
interest  in  crime,  and  in  ambiguous  characters,  and  in  genius 
that  is  very  nearly  mad.  He  has  just  as  strong,  though  not  so 
gross,  a  digestion  ;  he  worships  goodness  when  it  comes,  but  he 
likes  to  let  a  scoundrel  put  his  case  and  make  his  points.  His 
optimism  and  idealism  are  always  ready  to  break  in,  and  though 
the  result  is  not  always  poetry,  still  poetry  is  always  breaking 
in  too.  Li  Balzac  its  place  is  taken  by  a  thousand  pen-sees 
concerning  male  and  female  nature  and  social  phenomena.  The 
large-scale  apologia  is  only  an  expansion  of  Browning's  favourite 
form.  Poisoners  and  dukes  and  murderers  and  bishops  had 
already  had  a  hearing,  the  fullest  having  been  granted,  so  far, 
to  Guido.  But  the  '  modern  Don  Juan  '  and  the  '  saviour  of 
society  '  talk  through  whole  volumes,  and  the  '  elder  man  '  in 
the  Inn  Album  cannot  complain  of  the  hour-glass.  The  result  is 
not  always  tedious. 

The  earliest  and  most  sawdusty  poem  of  this  group  is  Prince 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau,  Saviour  of  Society.  It  had  been  drafted 
twelve  years  before  Napoleon  the  Third  lay  sick  at  Chislehurst  ; 
and  thus,  though  published  in  1871,  it  does  not  allude  to  his 
downfall.  Browning  did  not  share  his  wife's  admiration  for 
the  opportunist  visionary,  and  shared  still  less  the  fierce  attitude 
of  Victor  Hugo.  His  half -imaginary  prince  spins  a  spider's 
web  of  self-excuse  for  the  great  gulf  between  his  theories  and 
his  behaviour.  The  streak  of  idealism  is  true  to  history,  but 
otherwise  the  '  prince  '  is  little  akin  to  the  real  emperor.  And 
the  construction  of  the  poem  is  wantonly  confusing.  The 
overture,  which  at  first  seems  to  be  describing  facts,  turns  out 
to  have  been  only  a  dream.  Then  the  shuttle  flies  in  bewilder- 
ing fashion  between  what  the  speaker  did;  and  what  he  might 
have  done,  and  what  others  think,  or  might  have  thought, 
about  his  doings.  The  result  is  not  so  much  a  poem  as  a  long 
intricate  sophism  cut  into  the  blankest  of  iambics. 

In  Fifine  at  the  Fair  Browning  reverts  to  rhyme,  and  lightens 
the  rather  lumbering  trot  of  Drayton's  old  Alexandrine  couplet ; 


VERSE  APOLOGIAS  385 

and  indeed  he  gets  out  of  it  a  few  long  smooth  gallops  over  the 
sward.  His  Don  Juan  is  neither  sombre  nor  delightedly  cruel, 
but  simply  a  man  who  inveterately  hunts  for  experience .  Don 
Juan  walks  through  the  fair  with  Elvire,  and  proclaims  her  the 
perfect  type  of  wife  ;  and  he  is  in  earnest  for  the  time.  He 
sets  her  high  above  the  gypsy  Fifine,  the  newest  of  all  the  endless 
fair  women — Helen,  Cleopatra,  and  the  rest — who  have  allured 
his  imagination.  He  argues  and  refines  on  the  matter  inter- 
minably— and  at  last  he  goes  off  to  Fifine,  with  an  obvious  lie 
to  Elvire  upon  his  lips.  Much  of  Juan's  harangue  is  a  weari- 
ness ;  but  the  book  is  remarkable  for  the  beauty  of  its  similes, 
in  which  much  of  the  poetry  takes  refuge,  and  which  are  drawn 
out  almost  to  the  length  of  parables.  Also  there  are  the  lovely 
Breton  landscapes  of  cliff  and  foreshore,  and  the  plash  of  the 
waters  gets  into  the  verse.  In  the  lyrical  prologue  and  epilogue, 
the  one  gay  and  gracious,  the  other  curt  and  elliptical,  the 
double  strain  of  the  poem  is  repeated. 

The  facts  of  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  were  taken  from 
a  recent  cause  celebre.1  The  opposition  is  between  the  idyllic 
sleepy  setting  (the  white  cotton)  and  the  tale  of  blood  and 
avarice  (the  red  cotton)  there  enacted.  A  further  symbolism 
is  implied  in  the  second  title,  Turf  and  Towers,  which  contrast 
the  life  that  drifts  at  ease  with  the  '  sharpened  life  '  which, 
Meredith  tells  us,  '  commands  its  course.'  The  hero  is  another 
sophist,  one  Miranda,  a  Catholic  who  tries  to  serve  both  masters, 
ease  and  religion,  turf  and  towers.  This  converted  waster, 
after  a  surprising  chain  of  events  and  reflections,  gives  a  show 
of  sincerity  to  his  madness  by  flinging  himself  from  the  top  of 
the  '  tower.'  The  symbolism  weighs  the  story  down.  When 
Browning  keeps  to  sheer  sardonic  comedy  he  is  excellent,  and 
Moliere  or  Henri  Becque  might  have  praised  the  scene  in  which 
Clara,  the  widow  of  Miranda,  defies  all  his  harpy  '  Cousinry  ' 
and  sits  firm  in  her  strong  financial  position.  Despite  the 
squalor  of  the  story,  the  poet  remains  genial  and  almost  hopeful 
at  the  end  of  it . 

So  much  cannot  be  said  of  The  Inn  Album,2  where  he  hardly 
speaks  in  person  at  all.  The  rascal  of  the  piece,  the  '  elder  man,' 
predominates  ;  and  his  hypocrisy  goes  to  the  length  of  talking 
absolutely  like  Browning.  He  exclaims  to  the  woman  whom  he 
has  betrayed  and  whom  he  is  soon  to  try  and  blackmail, 

Let  this  parenthetic  doubt 
Of  love,  in  me,  have  been  the  trial- test 
Appointed  to  all  flesh  at  some  one  stage 
Of  soul's  achievement, 

VOL.    I.  2  B 


380  BROWNING 

which  is  Satan  quoting  scripture.  By  such  strokes  the  villains 
of  Thackeray  are  outdone  ;  but  the  Inn  Album  often  recalls 
his  novels.  There  is  the  same  knowledge  of  the  card -room, 
the  club-world,  and  the  half -world.  The  story  is  freely  adapted 
from  an  actual  scandal  of  the  last  generation,  and  is  too  intricate 
to  epitomise  easily  ;  but  the  incidents  are  closely  riveted,  and 
the  actual  ending  is  the  only  possible  one.  All  the  characters 
are  unnamed.  The  '  lady  '  is  no  lamblike  or  saintlike  PompiUa, 
but  magnificent  in  wrath  and  denunciation.  She  was  ruined, 
she  fled  to  a  dreary  marriage  ;  the  younger  man,'  one  of 
Browning's  best  delineations  of  manly  and  primitive  youth, 
has  loved  and  missed  her,  not  knowing  that  her  injurer  is  the 
'  elder  man,'  the  very  man  who  has  taken  him  up,  initiated  him, 
fleeced  him,  and  won  his  adoration.  At  the  crisis  he  slays 
the  elder  man,  and  the  woman  commits  suicide.  At  last,  with 
the  two  bodies  lying  before  him,  he  opens  the  door  to  a  fourth 
person,  the  young  girl  whom  he  was  about  to  marry  and  who 
had  sought  the  counsel  of  the  dead  woman.  Save  for  this 
lightly  pencilled  figure  there  is  hardly  a  touch  of  charm  in  The 
Inn  Album,  except  one  description  of  an  elm-tree  : 

O  you  exceeding  beauty,  bosomful 

Of  lights  and  shades,  murmurs  and  silences, 

Sun-warmth,  dew-coolness, — squirrel,  bee,  and  bird, 

High,  higher,  highest,  till  the  blue  proclaims 

'  Leave  earth,  there  's  nothing  better  till  next  step 

Heavenward  ! ' — so,  off  flies  what  has  wings  to  help. 

The  Inn  Album  is  the  last  remarkable  long  poem  that  Brown- 
ing wrote.  It  has  discomfited  some  of  his  admirers,  but  had 
it  not  been  in  verse  it  would  have  taken  its  sure  place  in  fiction. 
It  recalls  the  old  '  domestic  '  tragedies  like  Arden  of  Feversham, 
where  the  passions  are  left  naked  and  their  speech  is  little 
transfigured  out  of  the  ferocity  of  fact.  Still,  Browning  throws 
a  fine  spume  of  his  own  over  the  most  literal  language  ;  and  the 
dignity  of  the  injured  lady  lifts  The  Inn  Album  out  of  bare 
realism. 


Meanwhile  Browning  began,  for  refreshment,  to  produce  his 
'  transcripts  '  of  Greek  stories.  So  might  a  man,  whilst  working 
in  mine  or  sewer,  make  holiday  in  the  open-air  theatre  of 
Athens  or  Epidaurus.  He  could  not  for- ever  resist  the  call  of 
beauty.  He  began  with  Balaustion  's  Adventure,  where  cordiality 
and  song  predominate,  and  hope  and  goodness  flower.  The 
setting  was  partly  suggested  by  Plutarch,  but  the  girl  Balaustion , 


GREEK  POEMS  887 

the  '  wild  pomegranate -flower,'  who  chants  the  Alcestis  of 
Euripides  to  the  Syracusans  for  the  redemption  of  the  Grecian 
captives,  is  the  poet's  own  invention.  She  is  one  of  his  living 
and  delightful  figures.  '  Herakles,'  *  whom  Euripides  had 
presented  in  a  perplexing  light  (some  scholars  believing  the 
intention  to  be  merely  derisive),  is  glorified  into  a  type  of  the 
rescuer.  His  '  great  voice,'  breaking  in  upon  the  keeners  in 
the  house  of  mourning,  rather  suggests  the  caricature,  now  well 
known,  of  the  solid  and  ruddy  Browning  surrounded  by  a 
shadowy  chorus  of  dreary  persons.  The  play  is  '  transcribed,' 
sometimes  roughly  and  literally,  but  into  close  and  expressive 
verse,  and  is  commented  on  from  point  to  point  by  Balaustion- 
Browning.  All  is  clear  and  straightforward  ;  the  refining  over 
the  vacillations  of  Admetus  is  part  of  the  problem  raised  by  the 
original  play.  Browning  wished  to  defend  his  wife's  favourite 
Greek  poet,  and  did  something  to  shake  the  estimate  which 
had  been  encouraged  by  the  unintelligent  abuse  of  Schlegel  in 
his  Lectures  on  Dramatic  Literature  of  1808.  It  is  clear  what 
Bro wning  owed  to  Euripides  and  to  Greece.  For  the  moment 
they  cleared  his  voice,  they  brought  him  back  to  pure  beauty. 
Already  in  1842  he  had  produced  Artemis  Prologizes,  which 
was  meant  to  introduce  a  sequel  of  his  own  to  the  Hippolytus. 

But  beauty  does  not  detain  him  long  :  in  Aristophanes' s 
Apology  he  is  off  again  into  the  jungle.  The  actual  version  of 
the  Hercules  Fur  ens  has  the  same  virtues  as  that  of  the  Alcestis  ; 
and  it  is  even  closer,  because  there  are  lyrical  measures  corre- 
sponding in  position  to  those  of  the  original.  Balaustion  is 
again  the  speaker.  While  sailing  to  Rhodes  with  her  husband 
after  the  downfall  of  Athens,  she  dictates  to  him  the  story  of 
her  conflict  with  Aristophanes,  who  had  burst  into  her  house 
upon  the  news  of  the  death  of  Euripides.  He  makes  his 
'  apology  '  for  his  attacks  on  that  poet  ;  it  is  conceived  on 
conservative  lines  at  the  expense  of  the  sophist  and  eccentric. 
Balaustion  had  refuted  him  by  reciting  the  play.  The  apology 
bursts  into  splendour  here  and  there,  but  is  choked  with  crabbed 
learned  allusions  and  jibes,  and  no  Greek  would  have  uttered 
it  or  listened  to  it.  Aristophanes  makes  amends  when  he 
chants,  in  sweet  and  flowing  terza  rima,  the  song  of  Thamyris. 
Soon  afterwards  Browning  produced  his  translation  of  the 
Agamemnon  of  /Eschylus,  which  few  have  praised.  The 
measure  is  not  happy  and  the  style  is  doggedly  literal  and 
strained.  The  mistake,  similar  to  that  which  Morris  made 
over  Beowulf,  seems  to  He  in  supposing  that  an  idiom  which, 
though  difficult,  is  natural  in  one  language  produces  the  same 


388  BROWNTNG 

effect  when  it  is  slavishly  followed  in  another  language  where 
it  is  not  natural  and  therefore  still  more  difficult.  We  are  far 
here  from  the  lovely  and  stately  Hellenic  of  his  youth,  Artemis 
Prologizes. 

Johnson  somewhere  shakes  his  head  over  the  task  of  '  the 
most  vigorous  mind  when  it  is  employed  at  onceoipon  argument 
and  poetry,'  and  in  LaSaisiaz  (1878),  whatever  the  fate  of  the 
argument,  the  poetry  must  be  held  to  suffer.  But  the  overture 
is  a  noble  utterance  of  collected  grief.  The  poet,  who  had  lost 
his  friend  and  fellow-climber,  treads,  now  alone,  the  familiar 
uphill  joyous  road  ;  and  the  verse,  with  its  Locksley  Hall 
rhymes,  echoes  his  paces.  The  rest  is  a  plea,  lofty  in  tenor  and 
bleak  in  language,  for  the  belief  in  personal  survival,  without 
which  all  human  hopes  are  represented  as  idle.  The  Stoical 
view  of  the  agnostic  does  not  figure  among  the  arguments  con- 
troverted. Many  passages  recall  Bishop  Butler,  and  Browning 
gives  a  new  turn  to  his  own  favourite  idea  of  life  as  a  probation  : 
the  soul  requires  a  troubled  progress  towards  perfection,  and 
this  progress  can  only  be  consummated  in  another  life.  In  the 
same  volume,  in  The  Tioo  Poets  of  Croisic,  he  turns  to  a  lighter 
mood.  This  is  one  of  his  pleasantest  works,  with  its  pensive 
moral.  The  poets  are  historical  persons.  There  is  Rene 
Gentilhomme,  who  prophesied  truly  the  birth  of  a  Dauphin, 
and  who  was  much  honoured  and  then  forgotten  ,  and  there 
is  Maillard,  or  Desforges,  who  disguised  himself  as  his  own  sister, 
letting  her  publish  his  verses  in  her  name,  and  who  thus  cheated 
Voltaire  into  saluting  him  gallantly.  Here  Browning  uses  the 
roguish  Don  Juan  metre,  though  he  may  not  make  the  utmost 
of  its  powers. 

XI 

He  now  went  back,  with  a  difference,  to  the  lyrical  ballad,  or 
story  of  action.  Most  of  the  Dramatic  Idyls  of  1879  and  1880 
are  of  this  kind,  and  are  also  poems  of  casuistry.  He  does  not 
deal  in  the  obvious  moral,  but  likes  to  exhibit  the  trial  of 
courage  or  piety  under  extraordinary  conditions,  when  a  sudden 
choice  must  be  made  carrying  with  it  either  self-acquittal  or 
permanent  remorse.  But  he  does  not  show  interest  in  the  mere 
temptation 

To  buy  the  merry  madness  of  one  hour 
With  the  long  irksomeness  of  following  time. 

We  must  have  strange  cases  ;  and  in  one  of  them,  that  of  Ivan 
Ivanovitch,  a  tale  which  he  had  heard  in  Russia  in  his  youth, 
the  poet  surety  turns  the  winch  too  far.     It  is  the  tale  of  Ivans 


DRAMATIC  IDYLS  389 

wife,  who  let  the  wolves  tear  her  cliildren  from  her,  and  resisted 
furiously,  but  did  not  fling  herself  to  die  with  them  ;  for  which 
lapse  Ivan  beheads  her  in  public,  and  the  village  pope  hails  him 
therefore  as  '  God's  servant,'  and  discourses  on  the  duties  of 
mothers .     The  event  may  have  happened  ;  but  is  the  sentiment 
simply  dramatic,  or  does  the  poet  too  applaud  the  atrocity  of 
Ivan  ?     If  so,  his  sympathy  is  better  warranted  in  the  case  of 
Martin  Relph,  where  the  conscience -stricken  speaker  is  a  con- 
structive murderer.     Ned  Bratts  is  versified  from  the  story  of 
'  Old  Tod  '  in  Bunyan's  Mr.  Badman  :   Bratts  and  his  wife  are 
slayers  and  thieves,  but  are  converted,  and  plunge  into  court ,  and 
confess ,  and  face  their  sentence .    The  speech  of  Bratts  is  a  grimy, 
fiery,  and  splendid  explosion.     In  Halbert  and  Hob  there  is  the 
just  and  tragic  though  not  the  fatal  explanation  of  a  fault  ;  the 
father  suffers  his  son  to  outrage  him,  just  so  far  as  he  had  out- 
raged his  own  father  long  ago,  but  no  further.     All  these  poems 
are  in  long  rolling  rhymes  of  various  pattern,  and  in  all  there  is 
the  genuine  ring.     The  situation  is  sharpest  and,  morally  speak- 
ing, most  intricate  in  Clive,  where  three  separate  mental  crises  are 
presented.     Two  are  actual  ;  there  is  the  breakdown  of  the  card- 
sharper,  whose  pistol  Clive,  his  exposer,  calmly  faces  ;  and  there 
is  the  test  of  Clive's  courage  as  he  does  so.     But  these  only 
lead  up  to  the  third  crisis,  which  is  imaginary,  and  which  con- 
sists in  the  humiliation  which  Clive  would  have  felt  if  his  enemy, 
instead  of  collapsing,  had  spared  him  in  assumed  contempt. 
The  whole  setting  and  performance  of  this    poem,  with    the 
figure  of  the  old  officer  silent!}7  listening  to  Clive's  reminiscence, 
is  worthy  of  BroAvning's  prime. 

In  others  of  the  -  idyls  '  there  is  also  a  recovery  of  charm. 
Such  are  the  Arab  tale  of  the  horse  Muleykeh,  and  the  Greek 
tales  of  Echeths  and  Pheidippides  ;  and  there  is  all  Browning's 
youthful  feeling  for  beauty  in  the  moon -scenery  of  Pan  and  Luna, 
where  the  silvery  images  make  us  forget  the  occasional  jars  of 
sound  : 

And  thus  it  proved  when — diving  into  space, 

Stript  of  all  vapour,  from  each  web  of  mist 

Utterly  film-free — entered  on  her  race 

The  naked  Moon,  lull-orbed  antagonist 

Of  night  and  dark,  night's  dowry  ;   peak  to  base, 

Upstarted  mountains,  and  each  valley,  kissed 

To  sudden  life,  lay  silver-bright ;   in  air 

Flew  she  revealed,  Maid-Moon  with  limbs  all  bare. 

Ixion,  which  comes  in  the  next  volume  (Jocoseria,  1883),  is 
not  properly  a  '  Hellenic  '  ;  for  the  myth  is  turned,  in  a  modern 
spirit,  into  a  scornful  condemnation  of  the  unjust  Zeus  by  the 


390  BROWNING 

tortured  lxion  ;  who  appeals  to  the  unknown  '  Potency  ' 
behind  the  tyrant,  in  the  name  of  the  ideal  rights  of  man. 
Shelley  in  his  '  DeniOgorgon  '  in  Prometheus  Unbound,  had  less 
successfully  personified  this  final  court  of  appeal.  Jocoseria, 
besides  the  famous  and  musical  lyric,  '  Never  the  time  and  the 
place,'  contains  one  dramatic  monologue,  Cristina  and  Mon- 
aldeschi,  which  is  a  fierce  and  magnificent  exhalation  of 
vengeance  planned  and  satisfied.  The  scene,  with  its  streak  of 
diabolic  humour,  shows  all  Bro wning's  pristine  power.  The 
craven  and  treacherous  lover  whom  the  queen  draws  by  her 
falsehoods  to  the  fatal  ambush  is  solely  but  sufficiently  depicted 
through  the  gestures  which  are  described  in  her  narrative. 
Browning  feels  an  almost  savage  interest  in  any  kind  of  coward. 
In  FerishtaJts  Fancies  (1884),  under  the  guise  of  an  Eastern 
fabulist,  Browning  once  again  reasons  out  his  faith.  Again 
we  learn  the  significance  of  earthly  pain  and  penance  and  the 
value  of  obstacles  to  the  aspiring  soul.  The  keynote  is  the 
worth  of  love,  as  compared  with  knowledge,  in  supporting  us 
through  the  struggle  ;  and  it  is  struck  in  the  inserted  lyrics, 
some  of  which  are  very  fresh  and  beautiful.  The  book,  for  the 
rest,  though  seldom  obscure,  is  crabbedly  and  barely  written, 
with  more  than  the  usual  play  of  quirk  and  eccentricity.  I  once 
saw  a  treasured  note  from  Browning  to  a  young  poet  who  had 
sent  him  verses  ;  wherein,  speaking  as  a  veteran  '  practitioner,' 
and  perhaps  echoing  his  own  Abt  Vogler,  he  noted  how  some 
chance  gathering  of  common  words  may  suddenly  break  into 
a  'star.'  The  stars  of  phrase  flash  out  more  rarely  in  these 
latest  volumes,  though  the  force  of  mind  is  unabated.  Parley- 
ings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in  their  Day  (1887)  is 
full  of  curious  interest  and  untired  play  of  intellect.  The 
parleyings  are  with  Christopher  Smart,  Bubb  Dodington,  the 
painter  Gerard  de  Lairesse,  and  other  forgotten  persons.  Some 
of  the  similes  and  descriptions  are  rich  in  colour  and  energy. 
The  body  of  Smart's  poetry  is  compared  to  a  decent  and  dreary 
mansion  in  which  one  gorgeous  chapel,  the  Song  to  David,  is 
concealed.  In  Gerard  de  Lairesse  the  figure  of  Artemis  is 
beheld  on  the  sun-steeped  mountain  after  the  clearing  of  the 
storm,  and  the  clear  tints  of  Artemis  Prologizes  reappear,  with 
a  swifter  measure  and  a  freer  style  : 

What  hope  along  the  hillside,  what  far  bliss 
Lets  the  crisp  hair-plaits  fall  so  low  they  kiss 
Those  lucid  shoulders  ?     Must  a  morn  so  blithe 
Weds  have  its  sorrow  when  the  twang  and  hiss 
Tell  that  from  out  thy  sheaf  one  shaft  makes  writhe 
Its  victim,  thou  unerring  Artemis  ? 


HIS  MUSIC  391 

The  thought,  no  doubt,  often  usurps  on  the  poetic  faculty  ; 
but  the  handiwork  is  still  that  of  a  great  old  age.  In  the 
posthumous  Asolando  the  poet  writes  his  own  epitaph,  '  One 
who  never  turned  his  back  .  .  ."  ;  a  poem  which  is  in  the  strain 
of  Prospice,  and  which,  if  less  sublime,  is  not  less  courageous. 
Any  signs  of  age  appear  rather  in  the  knotting  and  gnarling 
of  the  language  than  in  loss  of  power.  Asolando,  as  a  volume, 
shows  also  a  recovered  lightness  and  freshness  of  mood,  and 
some  of  the  verse  really  dances.  The  double  refrain  ('  Clara, 
Clara  ')  in  Rosny  recalls  the  '  Edward,  Edward  '  of  the  old  ballad. 
Speculative  is  a  good  dramatic  monologue  of  the  early  kind. 
The  noble  piece  called  Reverie  celebrates  the  trinity  of  Power, 
Love,  and  Faith.  '  All  these  and  more  come  flocking  '  to  prove 
Browning's  unconquerable  resilience,  one  of  his  greatest  qualities. 


xn 

Tennyson,  it  was  said  above,  tried  to  give  to  English  the 
virtues  of  Italian  ;  Browning  seemed  to  rejoice  in  the  inherent 
defects  of  our  language  ;  he  liked  it  to  be  English  to  a  fault. 
Not  that  he  was  prejudiced,  like  Morris,  against  the  '  learned  ' 
element  in  it,  or  against  the  legacy  of  Milton;  or  had  any 
leaning,  like  Swinburne,  to  the  use  and  abuse  of  biblical  diction. 
But  he  has  a  passion  for  the  monosyllable,  however  much  it 
may  creak  and  grind,  and  the  monosyllable  is  usually  of 
'native'  origin.  Nine  times  out  of  ten.  when  his  verse  is 
rough  or  deterrent,  that  is  the  reason.  Some  of  his  clusters 
of  consonants— ndgr,  Ipsf ',  lp-*s — recall  the  names  in  Gullivers 
Travels  : 

Let  us  not  always  say, 

'  Spite  of  this  flesh  to-day 
I  strove,  made  head,  gained  ground  upon  the  whole  ! ' 

As  the  bird  wings  and  sings, 

Let  us  cry  '  All  good  things 
Are  ours,  nor  soul  h e Ips  flesh  more  now  than  flesh  helps  soul.' 

Such  a  style,  which  comes  to  its  acme  in  Dramatis  Personce.  is 
well  and  duly  parodied  in  the  Heptalogia  ;  but  then  it  is  often 
the  right  and  necessary  style,  for  the  discords  are  wanted — 
wanted  in  the  service  of  an  intense  or  an  exalted  mood  which 
is  fully  conscious  of  the  past  or  present  struggle  involved  in 
its  attainment  ;  and  no  easier  style  would  serve.  And  the 
technique  of  the  verse  is  of  course  affected  by  this  congestion 
of   consonants    and    monosyllables  ;     the    result    being    many 


302  BROWNING 

'spondees,'  and  a  slow  hindered  march,  which  has  its  own 
music,  often  of  a  subtle  kind  : 

Take  the  cl6ak  from  his  face,  and  at  ffrst 
Let  the  c6rpse  do  its  w6rst. 

Hdw  he  lies  in  his  rfghts  as  a  man  ! 
Death  has  d6ne  all  death  can  .  .  . 

But  not  infrequently,  and  above  all  in  the  '  anapaestic  ' 
measures  of  which  he  is  otherwise  a  master,  he  falsifies  the 
natural  accent.1  Yet  he  goes  on  joyously  over  all  snags  and 
boulders  ;  and  whether  as  rough-rider,  or  when  guiding  his 
.smooth -pacing  Arab,  his  Muleykeh,  he  is  still  a  master-horseman. 
His  invention  and  his  control  of  metre  are  surprising,  and  to 
the  last  he  is  ever  finding  new  tunes.  The  slow  suave  undula- 
tions of  Rudel  ;  the  piercing  simple  cadences  of  White  Witch- 
craft ;  galloping  measures,  choppy  measures,  stately  measures, 
all  are  there.  But  to  enlarge  on  this  would  be  to  repeat  what 
has  been  well  said  by  others.  The  extremes  of  Browning's 
power  and  weakness,  of  his  roughness  and  smoothness,  are  to 
be  found  in  his  blank  verse. 

Something,  however,  may  be  added  on  his  grammar  2  and 
idiom,  which  have  certain  constant  features.  They  are,  as 
with  Shakespeare,  the  expression  of  life  and  impulse  ;  and, 
even  with  the  precedent  of  the  Grammarian,  it  may  seem  mere 
pedantry  to  think  of  '  properly  basing  '  them.  It  is  not 
pedantry  ;  but  the  subject  would  need  a  tractate.  Some 
peculiarities  lie  on  the  surface.  We  need  not  fear  the  curses 
launched  in  Pacchiarotto  against  the  '  impudence,  ignorance, 
envy,  and  malice  '  of  verbal  critics  ;  for  the  result  of  analysis 
only  tells  in  Browning's  honour. 

Was  it  '  grammar  '  wherein  you  would  '  coach  '  me — 

You, — pacing  in  even  that  paddock 

Of  language  allotted  you  ad  hoc, 

With  a  clog  at  your  fetlocks, — yoli — scorners 

<  >f  me  free  of  all  its  four  corners  ? 

Ami  Browning's  grammar  is  not  so  much  false  as  free.  It 
represents  an  effort  to  show  that,  for  all  the  work  of  the 
'  classical  '  and  succeeding  ages,  English  syntax  is  still,  in  the 
right  hands,  ductile.  Carlyle  made  a  similar  effort,  and,  for 
all  his  incidental  contortions,  prevailed-.  Browning  is  one  of 
the  few  English  poets  since  Milton  who  may  be  said  to  have 
a  grammar  of  his  own.  He  is  strong  enough  to  have  one.  It 
is,  no  doubt,  hit  or  miss  with  him.     But  the  grammar  is  much 


HIS  GRAMMAR  393 

the  same  throughout  ;  it  is  a  deliberately  practised  idiom  that 
soon  becomes  second  nature.  Some  features  of  it  may  be 
noticed  in  a  single  passage  in  his  '  parleying  '  with  Christopher 
Smart  : 

aSuch  success 
Befell  Smart  only  out  ofb  throngs  between 
Milton  and  Keats  that  donned  the  singing-dress — 
Smart,  solely  of  such  songmen,  pierced  the  screen 
'Twixt  thing  and  word,  lith  language  straight  fronib  soul, — '' 
Left  no"  fine  filmg-flake  on  the  naked  coal 
Live  from  the  censer — eshapeiy  or  uncouth, 
Fire-suffused  through  and  through,  one  blaze  of  truth 
Undeadened  by  a  lie", — (you  have  my  mind) — f 
For,  think  !   this-  blaze  outleapt  with8  black  behind 
And8  blank  before,  when  Hayley  and  the  rest  .  .  . 
But  let  the  dead  successors  worst  and  best 
Bury  their  dead :    with  life  be  my  concern — 
Yours  with  the8  fire8-flame  :    what  I  fain  would  learn 
Is  just* — (suppose  me  haply  ignorant 
Down  to  the  common  knowledge,0  doctors  vaunt  )f 
Just  this — why  only  once  the  fire-flame  wasa  .  .  . 

a.  Nothing  can  be  unliker  the  traditional  poetic  paragraph,  or 
'  period,'  either  grammatically  or  musically  :  it  is  natural, 
broken  speech  plunging  forward,  rather  fettered  by  its  rhymes, 
and  straining  to  be  blank  verse,  b.  There  is  some  of  that 
deliberate  omission  of  articles  which  is  most  marked  in  passages 
that  require  discords  and  thudding  spondees.  A  similar  effect 
is  heard  in  Shop  : 

Then  off  made1'  buyer  with  a  prize, 

Thene  seller  to  his  Times  returned, 
And  so  did  day  wear,  wear,  tillb  eyes 

Brightened  apace,  for  rest  was  earned  : 

He  lockedb  door  long  ereb  candle  burned. 


'6 


c.  Omission    of    relative    pronoun — again    for    staccato   effect. 

d.  Use  of  the  breathless  dash,  appositive  or  transitional,  eight 
times,  e.  Use  of  the  absolute  clause,  and  /.  of  parenthesis — 
both  of  them  causing  a  stoppage,  y.  Heaped  alliteration,  for 
the  enhancement,  or  at  the  cost,  of  melody.  So  we  might,  it 
is  plain,  proceed  ;  the  total  impression  being  one  of  an  inter- 
rupted stumbling  gallop,  of  a  concision  that  causes  delay,  and 
of  a  strange  rough  harmony  emerging  at  the  last.  This  is  the 
briefest  of  demonstrations  ;  the  special  idioms  of  Caliban,  of 
Bishop  Blougram,  and  of  Dominus  Hyacinthus,  are  super- 
imposed on  these  rude  elements.  The  parody  by  Calverley 
in  The  Cock  and  the  Bull  is  full  of  such  scholarship.  For 
Browning,  on  the  whole,  makes  good  his  grammar  and  syntax, 


394  BROWNING 

as  George  Meredith,  on  the  whole,  does  not.  We  ean  '  learn 
his  great  language,'  and  honourably  salute  it,  though  with 
occasional  amusement. 


XIII 

He  wrote  reams  of  verse  which  are  not  poetry,  though  poetry 
is  always  struggling  through.  He  seems  to  have  been  little 
aware  of  its  absence,  and  in  this  he  is  like  Chapman  and  many 
a  good  Elizabethan.  He  had  a  similar  contempt  for  the  public 
and  the  critics,  though  like  Tennyson  he  was  always  angrily 
thinking  about  them .  But  all  this  is  only  to  say  that  Browning's 
mental  force  and  alertness  outrange,  as  so  often  happens  with 
Englishmen  of  genius,  his  artistic  power.  He  tried  to  put  into 
poetry  much  that  should  never  have  gone  into  verse.  It  is 
not  true,  though  Swinburne  said  it,  that  Browning  is  rapid 
rather  than  obscure.  He  can  be  so  obscure  as  to  annul  the 
value  of  the  thought  which  he  less  than  half  conveys.  He 
breaks  his  fingers  on  what  is  stronger  than  the  strongest  man, 
namely  the  genius  of  the  language.  He  often  commits  himself 
to  impossible  forms  and  moulds,  as  in  Sordello  and  Hohenstiel- 
Schwangau  ;  some  of  these  long  poems  are  altogether  mis- 
creations.  Yet  all  this  was  but  the  excess  and  the  diversion  of 
strength.  It  is  clear  that  Browning's  noble  body  of  living  and 
consummate  work  is  none  the  worse  for  failures  that  lie  outside 
it. 

He  has  reasoned  and  philosophised  1  in  verse  more  than  any 
English  poet  of  equal  gift.  Much  has  been  written  on  his 
theology  and  its  'optimism.'  His  fervent  instinctive  theism 
encouraged  the  myth  that  he  was  of  Hebrew  blood.  It  is 
united  with  an  intense  if  undoctrinal  belief  in  personal  im- 
mortality, and  with  an  equally  undogmatic  and  mystical 
reverence  for  Christ,  whose  lineaments  he  draws  after  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  He  so  far  attends  to  current  controversies  as 
to  dismiss  certain  lurid  tenets.  This  he  does  in  the  satire  of 
Caliban  upon  Setebos,  and  in  the  Inn  Album,  and  Ixion,  where 
the  doctrine  of  reprobation  is  itself  cast  forth  unto  reprobation. 
The  very  faith  in  an  after-life,  proclaimed  in  La  Saisiaz,  re- 
pudiates the  conception  of  reward  and  punishment,  as  sapping 
the  moral  impulse  of  man  on  this  earth,  who  is  no  longer  dis- 
interested if  he  is  to  be  bribed  or  threatened.  Indeed,  the  force 
of  Browning's  appeal  is  always  moral  and  imaginative  rather 
than  speculative.  In  the  region  of  ideal  aspiration  we  must 
seek  for  his  power,  in  Abt  Vogler  and  in  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  and  in 


CHARACTERISTICS— HIS  PERSONAGES         395 

the  musings  of  Pope  Innocent,  arid  in  Prospice,  and  in  the 
Epilogue  to  Asolando.  Luckily  it  is  here  too  that  he  is  most  of 
a  poet  ;  and  when  he  is  once  fairly  on  his  way  few  have  equalled 
him  in  sureness  and  nobility  of  style.  His  execution,  at  its 
best,  does  not  fall  behind — it  is  worthy  of — his  energetic  spirit 
of  faith  and  courage.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  their  validity, 
we  feel  that  the  utmost  has  been  done  for  their  expression. 
The  optimist,  at  the  worst,  has  had  a  great  innings,  and  his 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  of  traps  and  pitfalls  and  stumblings 
and  of  the  enemy  generally,  has  saved  him  from  too  cheap 
assertion.  And  he  is  always  best  when  he  chants  his  sermon. 
Start  with  Browning  where  we  will,  we  are  apt  to  come  back 
at  last  to  his  lyrical  gift. 

The  web  of  circumstance  and  situation  in  his  imaginary 
world,  I  began  by  saying,  is  very  tough  and  definite,  and  he 
gives  the  taste  of  life,  with  its  oddity,  colour,  and  splendour, 
as  sharply  as  any  poet,  whenever  he  likes.  The  pictures  of 
Caliban,  and  the  Bishop  of  St.  Praxed's,  and  Bratts,  and  a  score 
of  others,  cannot  be  outdone  in  their  intense  expression  of 
temperament.  Down  into  the  pit  of  realism,  below  the  sphere 
of  poetry,  yet  making  a  kind  of  poetry  out  of  what  he  finds, 
Browning  often  goes,  with  a  dramatic  sympathy  that  seems 
to  be  rather  intensified  by  his  moral  repulsion  (indulgence  or 
complicity  being  far  from  him).  But  short  of  this,  he  moves 
joyously  above-ground,  with  a  certain  good-natured  impatient 
contempt  for  the  average  nature,  and  also  a  clear  vision  of  it ; 
the  contempt  distinguishing  him  from  Shakespeare,  as  it  does 
from  Chaucer,  to  whom  Landor  compared  him.  His  world, 
nevertheless,  is  amply  peopled.  Yet  with  whom,  or  with  what  ? 
He  has  more  dramatic  sense  than  any  poet  of  his  time  ;  but 
which  of  his  characters  have  forced  their  way  into  the  general 
memory  ?  Possibly  Pippa,  or  Pompilia  ;  more  probably  Mi*. 
Sludge.  No  one  else,  despite  all  those  brains  and  pains  !  There 
is  no  Hamlet,  no  Satan  ;  certainly  not  even  a  '  new  Don  Juan  ' ! 
It  may  be  said  that  the  test  is  too  hard,  and  that  Browning 
speaks  to  the  lettered  public.  But  his  '  Karshish,  Cleon, 
Norbert,  and  the  fifty,'  for  all  their  liveliness  and  eloquence, 
are  hardly  persons.  Some,  indeed,  are  types  not  to  be  for- 
gotten, and  Guido  and  Fra  Lippo  are  more  than  that.  And 
it  is  a  great  thing  to  create  types,  as  Chaucer  created  them. 
But  Browning's  men  are  often  spokesmen — voices  of  his  own 
ideas  on  love  and  art  and  faith  ;  and  they  are  little  more  for 
all  the  colour  and  detail  that  surrounds  them.  They  are,  from 
this  point  of  view,  wonderful  inventions.     His  women  are  more 


396  BROWNING 

real  and  satisfactory,  especially  when  they  speak  for  them- 
selves. They  theorise  less  ;  and  sometimes,  like  the  lady  in 
Tlie  Inn  Album,  they  have  a  poetic  reality.  Sometimes  they 
too  are  types,  and  profoundly  representative  ones,  like  the 
speaker  in  Any  Wife  to  Any  Husband.  But  here  we  approach 
Browning  ^s  safest  and  least  hindered  mode  of  speech,  which  is, 
once  more,  the  lyrical.  Now  and  then,  as  in  the  case  of  Pompilia, 
the  impression  is  lyrical,  while  the  form  is  not  so.  Browning 
presents  situations,  but  his  aim  is  through  them  to  present 
passion — anybody's  passion  ;  and  to  present  thought  too,  with 
a  shadowy  thinker  behind  it.  From  1842  to  1890,  from 
Through  the  Metidja  to  Dubiety,  a  poem  in  the  Asolando  volume, 
he  retains  this  power,  which  constitutes  his  surest  title-deeds  ; 
he  keeps  the  tones  of  a  perennial  youth,  which,  is  not  like  that 
of  Tithonus  : 

Perhaps  but  a  memory,  after  all  ! 

Of  what  came  once  when  a  woman  leant 
To  feel  for  my  brow  where  her  kiss  might  fall. 

Truth  ever,  truth  only  the  excellent  ! 

There  is  much,  then,  in  Browning  which  is  not  exactly  poetry, 
but  which  is  all  the  same  well  w^orth  having.  It  may  be  good 
and  entertaining,  of  the  Ingoldsby  kind,  like  the  beginning  of 
Holy  Cross  Day  ('  Fee,  faw,  fum  !  bubble  and  squeak,'  etc.). 
More  often  it  is  in  blank  verse,  and  in  the  nature  of  rapid, 
allusive,  and  sarcastic  narrative  or  apologia.  Much  of  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,  and  most  of  The  Inn  Album,  is  of  this  order. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  the  use  of  metre  is  unwarrantable  ; 
but  it  is  just  the  metre  that  carries  us  through.  The  level  is 
that  of  very  animated  prose,  but  the  style  is  a  new  invention — 
cynical,  broken,  conversational,  crutching  itself  quite  effec- 
tively upon  the  metre  : 

And  did  I  spoil  sport,  pull  face  grim, — nay,  grave  '! 

Your  pupil  does  you  better  credit !     No  ! 

I  parleyed  with  my  passbook, — rubbed  my  pair 

At  the  big  balance  in  my  banker's  hands, 

Folded  a  cheque  cigar-case-shape, — just  wants 

Filling  and  signing, — and  took  train,  resolved 

To  execute  myself  with  decency 

And  let  you  win, — if  not  Ten  thousand  quite, 

Something  by  way  of  wind-up-farewell  burst 

Of  fire-work  nosegay  ! 

When  he  likes,  Browning  can  always  spurt  up  from  such  a 
level  into  real  poetry  ;  or  again,  he  can  slip  into  a  more  agree- 
able, easy  kind  of  verse-talk.     In  The  Inn  Album  this  variety 


MRS.  BROWNING  397 

abounds,  and  is  delightful.  There  is  one  allusion  to  '  poor 
hectic  Cowper,'  and  the  history  of  the  '  Night-Cap  '  suggests, 
perhaps  intentionally,  the  manner  of  The  Task  : 

And  so,  encroaching  more  and  more 
It  lingers  long  past  the  abstemious  meal 
Of  morning,  and,  as  prompt  to  serve,  precedes 
The  supper-summons,  gruel  grown  a  feast. 

All  this  brings  us  back  to  our  starting-point  :  Browning's 
normality,  sanity,  humanity  ;  he  is  a  man  of  the  world,  in  the 
best  and  strongest  sense  of  the  term  ;  his  genius  has  its  sound, 
stubborn  roots  in  real  life.  And  as  to  his  whole  body  of  per- 
formance, we  may-  look  on  it  as  on  some  metal-worker's  or 
lapidary's  store,  stocked  with  rubies  and  chrysolites  of  the  best, 
and  with  rings  and  armlets  '  justifiably  golden,'  and  also  with 
the  same  things  half -wrought  and  ill  set,  and  again  with 
'  cradles  '  of  the  unwashed,  gold -containing  rubble  ;  one  and 
all  being  paraded,  as  if  they  were  the  regalia,  with  a  queer 
unconsciousness  of  difference.  This  large  absence  of  self- 
criticism  is  one  thing  that  makes  Browning  so  big,  so  attractive, 
so  Elizabethan.  He  talked  endlessly  about  art,  but  hardly 
knew  when  he  was  an  artist  and  when  he  was  not,  leaving  us 
to  state  that  matter  as  best  we  mav. 


xrv  • 

The  early  reputation  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  x  (1806-61)  was 
made  by  two  volumes  published  before  her  marriage,  The 
Seraphim  and  Other  Poems  of  1838,  and  the  Poems  of  1844. 
The  first  of  these  contained  not  only  highly-pitched  romantic 
lyric  like  Margret,  and  romantic  narrative  like  IsobeVs  Child, 
but  some  less  ambitious  verse  of  finer  workmanship,  mostly 
reminiscent,  such  as  The  Island.  The  Deserted  Garden,  The 
Sea- Mew,  and  My  Doves  ;  while  the  most  popular  as  well  as 
the  most  impassioned  piece,  though  not  the  surest  in  note,  was 
Coivper's  Grave.  In  the  Poems  of  1844  the  scope  is  wider,  the 
hand  less  uncertain,  and  the  intensity  greater  ;  it  contains  The 
Cry  of  the  Children,  and  Catarina  to  Camoens,  and  Wine  of 
Cyprus  ;  but  the  form,  while  often  beautiful  and  melodious, 
is  still  inadequate  to  the  occasion. 

There  are  more  romances,  like  the  overcharged  Lady 
Geraldine's  Courtship,  and  pleasant  simple  things  like  the  lines 
To  Flush,  My  Dog  ;  who,  she  observes  in  a  letter,  '  understands 
Greek  excellently  well.'  But  work  like  A  Rhapsody  of  Life's 
Progress  again  shows  the  authoress  on  a  false  track  ;   within  a, 


398  MRS.  BROWNING 

few  years  sho  was  to  find  a  truer  one.  Meanwhile  in  1844,  she 
contributed  a  fervent  essay  on  Carlyle,1  and  a  good  deal  of  other 
matter,  to  A  New  Spirit  of  the  Age,  by  the  poet  Home,  the 
writer  of  Orion. 

Miss  Barrett's  marriage  to  Robert  Browning  in  1846  did  not 
merely  bring  her  renewed  health  and  personal  happiness  after 
an  invalided  and  hermit  life  ;  it  was  also  a  release  from  a  kind 
of  prison.  Her  father's  notion  of  the  patria  potestas,  in  the 
article  of  marriage,  amounted  to  a  monomania,  and  the  wedding 
took  place  without  his  knowledge.  It  enabled  Mrs.  Browning 
to  escape  from  London  to  Italy,  and  from  a  sofa  surrounded 
with  books  to  the  great  world,  Browning's  '  world  of  men,' 
of  great  affairs,  and  of  vital  ideas  :  and  she  herself  was 
afterwards  to  write  : 

I  lived  with  visions  for  my  company 
Instead  of  men  and  women,  years  ago. 

The  letters  exchanged  between  Browning  and  Miss  Barrett 
were  published  after  both  were  dead  ;  they  do  nothing  but 
honour  to  both  writers,  of  course  ;  yet  the  reader  is  shy  of  over- 
hearing love-letters  ;  and  another  record  of  this  fortunate 
union  was  given  to  the  world  by  the  poetess  in  her  book  of 
sonnets,  first  privately  printed  in  1847,  and  in  1850  published 
as  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese.  They  come  not  from  the 
Portuguese,  but  from  the  soul  of  the  writer,  and  often  attain  a 
purity  of  form  that  is  worthy  of  their  splendid  inspiration. 
Like  the  nightingale,  Mrs.  Browning  was  '  a  creature  of  a 
fiery  heart.' 

The  Brownings  lived  and  wrote  in  Italy,  their  second  country, 
making  occasional  flights  to  England.  Their  headquarters 
were  in  Florence,  and  Mrs.  Browning's  next  book,  Casa  Ouidi 
Windows  (1851)  is  the  record  of  a  sanguine,  absorbed  on- 
looker, vehement  in  sympathy  with  the  Italian  cause  and 
nourishing  an  admiration,  afterwards  to  be  chilled,  for  Louis 
Napoleon.  It  is  most  unequal  in  execution,  but  is  alive  with 
observation  and  enthusiasm.  In  1857,  adventuring  on  blank 
verse,  Mrs.  Browning  produced  the  long  story,  Aurora  Leigh, 
which  succeeded,  but  which  is  now  somewhat  stranded.  Most 
of  the  Poems  before  Congress  (1860)  are  political  rather  than 
poetical.  But  the  posthumous  volume  of  1862  contains  some 
of  Mrs.  Browning's  best  writing,  including  Bianca  among  the 
Nightingales  and  that  triumph  in  dramatic  monologue,  Lord 
Walter 's  Wife.  The  influence  of  her  husband's  Dramatic 
Lyric?,  for  good  and  ill,  can  here  be  traced  ;  the  style  is  stronger. 


DRAWBACKS— NATURE— THE  GREEKS         399 

and  the  grasp  of  situation  too  ;    but  Browning's  ruggedness 
does  not  sit  well  upon  her  looser  habit  of  speech. 

There  have  been  few  good  poetesses  at  any  time  or  in  any 
country.  Amongst  those  who  have  written  in  English,  it  is 
equally  certain  that  Mrs.  Browning  is  not  the  surest  artist  and 
that  she  '  has  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive  soul.'  She 
deserves  her  husband's  praises  so  well,  that  it  is  an  ungrateful 
business  to  criticise  her  strictly.  One  Word  More,  and  the 
'posy '  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  and  By  the  Fireside,  considered 
as  a  description  of  Mrs.  Browning's  spirit  and  nature,  do  not 
lead  to  disappointment  when  we  turn  to  her  own  poetry.  As 
to  her  performance,  it  is  well  to  approach  it  with  some  critical 
precautions.  It  would  be  a  mistake,  within  a  week  of  doing  so, 
to  read  either  Robert  Browning  or  Christina  Rossetti,  and  it 
is  best,  perhaps,  to  begin  with  a  prejudice  of  the  right  kind,  in 
order  to  find  how  often  it  is  disarmed.  Prepare  from  the  first 
to  come,  almost  anywhere,  on  a  sudden  lapse  of  language  into 
almost  every  fault  except  vulgarity,  or  on  a  vicious  rhyme  or  a 
defect  of  rhythm,  or  on  queer  vague  matter,  diffuse  and  high- 
flown,  or  on  hectic  writing.  Expect  all  this, — and  again  and 
again  you  will  not  find  it  ;  but  instead  will  come  on  passages 
of  melody  unbroken  and  imagery  unimpaired  ;  on  gorgeous 
things,  and  also  on  simple  things,  which  are  successful,  and 
which  leave  you  free  to  admire  the  generous  poetic  vision  which 
inspires  them.  If  Mrs.  Browning  had  written  more  things 
like  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  she  might  have  ranked 
with  a  poet  like  Rossetti,  and  not,  as  she  does  rank,  with  a 
poet  like  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  was  also  a  sonneteer.  The 
parallel  may  seem  an  odd  one,  but  it  is  true  up  to  the  point 
where  I  wish  to  leave  it.  In  both  writers  there  is  the  same 
intermittence,  the  same  occasional  triumph  ;  and  both  of  them 
frequently  leave  us  with  the  sense  of  a  Tightness  that  has  only 
just  gone  wrong.  Both,  too,  have  the  power  of  recovery,  and 
are  always  liable  to  be  excellent. 


XV 

Mrs.  Browning  from  her  youth  up  had  a  passion  for  nature, 
and  also  a  passion  for  the  Greek  poets.  The  copses  and 
orchards,  the  rich  fat  rolling  scenery,  breaking  into  steepness, 
of  the  countryside  lying  below  the  Malverns,  on  their  Hereford- 
shire flank,  are  heard  of  in  her  early  writings  ;  nor  did  Italy 
ever  make  her  forget  them.     These  Ledbury   verses  include 


400  MRS.  BROWNING 

The  Lost  Bower,  The  Deserted  Garden,  and  others  already  named  ; 
also  the  pretty  Hector  in  the  Garden  : 

Underneath  the  chestnuts  dripping. 

Through  the  grasses  wet  and  fair, 

Straight  I  sought  my  garden-ground 

With  the  laurel  on  the  mound, 
And  the  pear-tree  oversweeping 

A  side-shadow  of  green  air. 

In  the  garden  lay  supinely 

A  huge  giant  wrought  of  spade  !  .  .  . 

The  giant  is  the  figure  of  Hector  wrought  in  flowers,  and  the 
child  dreams  that  perhaps  the  soul  of  the  real  Hector  may  enter 
into  the  giant.     For  more  work  like  this,  who  would  not  give 
away  all  Mrs.  Browning's  Byronic  or  spasmodic  compositions 
like  The  Seraphim  and  A  Drama  of  Exile  ?     And  some  of  her 
romances  too  ;   but  we  must  not  ignore  Margret,  with  its  com- 
plaining music  and  deftly  varied  refrain.     Of  the  refrain  Mrs. 
Browning  was  fond  ;   but  it  is  a  dangerous  device,  for  while  a 
good  refrain  may  save,  a  bad  one  will  damn,  almost  any  poem 
in  the  world.     The  nightingales,  singing  at  the  end  of  each 
verse  in  Bianca,  sing  aright  ;    but  the  repetition  of  the  words 
Toll  slowly  in  the  Lay  of  the  Brown  Rosary  only  tempts  us  to  say 
with  Othello,  Silence  that  dreadful  bell!    Yet,  again,  the  burden 
of  The  Dead  Pan  is  a  true  close,  and  aptly  fitted   to  every 
stanza  :    Pan,  Pan  is  dead.     This  piece  is  a  noble  fruit  of 
Mrs.  Browning's  Greek  studies,  which  claim  a  separate  mention. 
She  read  the  poets  honestly  in  the  originals,  from  Homer  to 
Gregory  Nazianzen,  and  in  Wine  of  Cyprus  recites  their  praises 
with  much  colour,  gaiety,  and  ardour.     It  is  her  happiest  piece 
of  familiar  verse,  and  alludes  to  her  readings  with  her  blind 
instructor,   Hugh   Stuart   Boyd  ;    the   memory  of  the   same 
scholar  is  honoured  afterwards  in  three  sonnets,  of  which  the 
last,  entitled  Legacies,  is  of  great  beauty.     The  Greeks  did  not 
teach  Mrs.  Browning  their  own  virtues  of  form  ;    but  she  has 
her  place,  beside  the  transcriber  of  the  Alcestis,  among  the 
poetic    humanists    of   the    period.     Her    dealings    with    '  our 
JSschylus,   the  thunderous  '    were,   indeed,    not   much    more 
fortunate  than  her  husband's.     She  produced,  and  deplored, 
a  youthful  version  of  the  Prometheus,  and  afterwards  made 
another  one.     Her  essay  (1842)  on  The  Greek  Christian  Poets 
contains  many  translations,  and  is  a  rapid,  not  to  say  scamper- 
ing, review  of  an  enthusiastic,  though  not  uncritical  cast,  and 
is  another  fruit  of  the  lessons  described  in  Wine  of  Cyprus.     Her 
Book  of  the  Poets  (1842)  is  in  a  similar  style,  and  full  of  eager 


RHYMES  401 

enjoyment  ;  the  poets  are  the  English  poets,  and  the  list 
closes  with  Wordsworth,  whose  reputation  was  now  established, 
and  whose  influence  is  occasionally  traceable  in  Mrs.  Browning  : 
and  that  to  advantage,  as  in  the  charming  piece  called  An 
Island.  A  Vision  of  Poets  is  the  counterpart  in  verse  to  the 
Book  of  the  Poets.  Though  not  wholly  successful,  it  contains  a 
happy  characterisation  of  Chaucer,  and  also  of  Ossian,  '  once 
counted  greater  than  the  rest  '  ;  and,  further,  some  true 
Tennysonian  scenery  : 

A  wild  brown  moorland  underneath, 
And  four  pools  breaking  up  the  heath 
With  white  low  gleamings,  blank  as  death. 

There  is  nothing  to  be  said  for  Mrs.  Browning's  deliberate 
way  of  rhyming  falsely  x  whenever  she  is  minded  to  do  so. 
She  says  that  it  is  the  '  result  not  of  carelessness,  but  of  con- 
viction, and  indeed  of  much  patient  study  of  the  great  masters 
of  English.'     Nothing  has  hurt  her  reputation  more  ;    but  the 
precise  nature  and  extent  of  her  error  must  be  remembered.     It 
occurs  chiefly  in  her  early  works,  little  in  the  Sonnets  from  the 
Portuguese  or  in  Casa  Guidi  Windows  ;  and  chiefly,  also,  where 
she  is  courting  the  difficulties  of  double  rhyme.     English  has  its 
traditional  freedoms,  which  are  somewhat   boldly  extended, 
as  the  next  chapter  will  show,  by  Dante  Rossetti.     In  The 
Blessed  Damozel  are  to  be  found  :   untrod,  God,  cloud,  and  mild, 
jilVd,  smiVd.     This   is  '  consonance  '  :    the  vowel  is  deserted, 
the  following  consonant-sounds  are  retained.     Mrs.  Browning 
goes  further,  and  passes  bounds  with  her  mortal,  turtle  ;    altars, 
welters  ;     enters,    centaurs  ;     moonshine,    sunshine.     Assonance 
(which  is  the  retention  of  the  vowel,  while  the  following  con- 
sonant-sounds are  altered)  she  also  uses,  but  not  so  freely, 
though  she  is  commonly  reproached  with  '  assonances.'     Such 
are  :    benches,  Influences,  Nazianzen,  glancing  ;    trident,  silent. 
But  sometimes  she  combines  both  processes,  and  two  examples 
will  probably  suffice   the   reader  :     angels,   candles  ;     panther, 
sa.unter.     I  do  not   know  whether  there  be  any  language  in 
which    resemblances    like    these    would    be    accepted.     These 
practices    are   the   more   to   be  deplored    because   they  often 
introduce  the  effect  of   '  a  brazen  canstick  turned  or  a  dry 
wheel  grating,'  in  the  midst  of  an  otherwise  excellent  melody. 
The  effect  is  such  that  no  writer  of  any  credit,  since  Mrs. 
Browning,  has  tried  to  imitate  it. 


vol.  I.  2  c 


402  MRS.  BROWNING 

XVI 

The  forty-four  Sonnets  from,  the  Portuguese  form  a  sequence, 
or  continuous  poem,  written  in  a  state  of  happiness,  but  mostly 
ringing  the  changes  on  a  single  theme,  namely  the  writer's 
sense  of  humility  ;  with  a  standing  contrast  between  her 
p^rn^m^nniHitirtn  n.nci  hPr  former  one  of  loneliness  and  seclusion . 
The  tonelsnow  and  then  lighter,  as  beitts-+rerr-jey£ul  estate, 
and  then  it  runs  into  playful  images  and  conceits  ;  '  The  soul's 
Rialto  hath  its  merchandise  '  ;  and  there  is  a  strange  flight  of 
this  kind  in  the  thirty -seventh  sonnet  :  here,  in  the  sestet,  she 
exclaims  that  she  can  set  up  only  an  unworthy  counterfeit  of 
her  love,  even  as  a  '  shipwrecked  Pagan  safe  in  port  '  might 
set  up,  instead  of  'his  guardian  sea-god,'  a  'sculptured  porpoise." 
This,  however,  is  cheerfulness  breaking  through..  The  pre- 
vailing note  of  these  ^aoejm^  is  so  high,  the  spirit  so  ardent, 
and  the  matter  so  intimate,  that  they  might  seem  to  claim 
immunity  from  the  process  of  inspection.  Still,  the  sonnet - 
fornTTs~ThlTmost  >xacting~oTaII7anH  besides  "MrsT Browning 
published  the  book.  Everywhere  there  is  the  same  spiritual 
fire  ;  none  of  the  sonnets  are  without  beauty  ;  and  four  or 
five  of  them  approach  the  standard  of  finish  which  is  set  by  the 
great,  unforgettable  examples  in  the  language.  They  are  all 
in  the  Italian  form,  which  is  observed  with  due  care  as  regards 
the  rhyme-arrangement,  and  with  some  regularity  as  regards 
the  exact  distribution  of  the  thought  among  the  metrical 
sections.  One  of  the  best -wrought,,  in  thpsp.  rp«pp,ots_j^  the 
fifth,  where  the  single  image  of  the  ashes  of  the  heart,  poured 
1'rom  the  sepulchral  urn,  and  smouldering  at  the  feet  of  the 
beloved,  but  flaming  up  in  his  face  under  the  passionate  gust 
of  wind,  is  perfectly  carried  through.  The  sonnet  itself  flames 
up  in  the  last  words,  '  Stand  farther  off  then  !  go.'  Of  the  other 
three  that  are  perhaps  the  best,  the  fourteenth  ('  If  thou  must 
love  me  ')  has,  designedly,  the  rngn  iidizabelhaii  ring,  in  spite 
-  /  of  its  orthodox  versification  ;  the  most  lofty  and  magnificent, 
V       the  ^twenty-second,    '  When   our  two  souls,'   is   as   definitely 

f  modern  in  cast,  and~Ebe  most  Rossetti-like  (like  Dante,  not  like 
Christina  Rossetti)  ;  while  the  forty-third,  '  How  do  I  love 
thee  ?  '  a  much  more  even,  quiet,  ancT  regular  piece,  may  be 
thought  to  have  the  honours  in  point  both  of  depth  and 
simplicity.  A  commentary  on  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese 
may  be  found  in  the  small  group  of  companion-lyrics — in 
which  the  style  of  Robert  Browning  may  be  detected — called 
Insufficiency,  Inclusions,  Proof  and  Disproof.     Whatever  their 


< 


,4 


AURORA  LEIGH  403 

flaws,  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  stand,  by  right  of  subject, 
occasion,  and  temper,  and  frequently  by  right  of  workmanship, 
apart  from  all  other  English  sonnet  series  and  above  most  of 
them. 

The  first  and  longer  part  of  Casa  Guidi  Windows  records  the 
spectacle  of  Florence  in  1848,  when  the  Grand  Duke  Leopold 
made  his  promise,  which  came  to  nothing,  of  a  liberal  con- 
stitution. The  second  part,  written  three  years  later,  is  a 
generous  but  turbid  tirade,  telling  of  the  flight  of  Leopold,  of 
his  return  under  the  protection  of  Austrian  bayonets,  and  of 
the  departure  of  Pius  the  Ninth  to  Gaeta  ;  the  spirit  is  one  of 
bitter  disenchantment.  There  is  much  more  poetry  in  the 
first  part  ;  and  though  the  digressions  and  disquisitions  on  art 
are  a  kind  of  caricature  in  point  of  style  of  Andrea  del  Sarto 
and  Old  Pictures  in  Florence,  the  actual  diary  of  things  seen — 
the  procession  in  the  streets,  the  banners,  the  impassioned 
crowd — is  admirably  written.  This  was  a  new  venture  for 
Mrs.  Browning  ;  as  her  letters  show,  she  had  an  eye  for  a 
pageant,  in  its  colour  and  detail,  and  for  popular  traits  and 
gestures  ;  and  it  is  a  pity  that  she  did  not  write  thus  oftener. 
The  poem  is  in  a  breathless  measure  ;  the  stanzas  of  six  run  on 
unbrokenry,  and  the  melody  is  only  occasional  ;  and  the 
general  effect  is  confused. 

Aurora  Leigh,1  though  a  durious  document  of  the  time,  is,  it 
must  be  confessed,  something  of  a  '  chokepear  '  for  the  reader 
of  to-day.  It  is  a  long  story,  interlaced  with  long  discourses, 
and  occupying  four  hundred  pages  of  blank  verse.  Like  The 
Cry  of  the  Children,  it  is  a  proof  of  Mrs.  Browning's  deep 
humanitarian  feeling  and  of  her  large  heart.  Aurora  Leigh 
could  not  be  omitted  from  any  account  of  the  sentiment  which 
in  sundry  forms  animates  Carl  vie  and  Dickens,  Ruskin  and 
Kingsley  :  the  overflow  into  literature  of  the  quickened  sym- 
pathy for  the  poor  and  the  dispossessed,  and  of  a  noble  indigna- 
tion against  the  more  cruel  and  irrational  kind  of  social  taboo. 
The  real  heroine,  Marian  Erie,  a  sacrificed,  innocent  daughter 
of  the  people,  gives  up  her  betrothed,  the  exalted  philanthropist, 
Romney  Leigh,  sooner  than  drag  him  down  to  her  level,  and 
then  vanishes.  Aurora  Leigh,  his  cousin,  the  woman  of  letters, 
who  has  watched  the  story  and  befriended  Marian,  in  the 
end  accepts  Romney.  None  of  these  persons  are  particularly 
real,  and  we  have  the  painful  sense  that  much  honourable 
emotion  has  been  spent  upon  a  crowd  of  shadows.  And  the 
endless  preaching,  arguing,  and  moral  philosophising  is  almost 
as  trying  as  anything  in  the  verse  of  George  Eliot.     The  verse 


404  MRS.  BROWNING 

is  prosaic  and  high-pitched  in  turn,  as  in  work  of  this  kind  it  is 
bound  or  doomed  to  be  :  as  it  is,  again,  in  Lytton's  Lucile.  Yet 
here  again,  as  in  Casa  Guidi  Windows,  we  are  aware  that  in 
Mrs.  Browning  there  arc  more  than  the  makings  of  a  poetic 
observer.  The  domestic-  scenes  and  the  scraps  of  natural  talk 
arc  the  best  parts  of  Aurora  Leigh  :  the  speeches  of  Marian 
Erie  herself,  being  1  he  simplest .  are  t  he  best  of  all.  But  in  form , 
and  temper,  and  purpose  the  poem  dates  itself  in  the  most 
singular  way  ;  and  it  is  needless  to  echo  that  stray  fling  of 
FitzGerald,  which  drove  Browning  to  such  a  burst  of  fury  ; 
>eemg  that,  whether  we  thank  the  powers  for  it  or  not,  there 
will  '  be  no  more  Aurora  Leighs.' 

Altogether,  we  leave  Mrs.  Browning  with  a  mixture  of 
admiration  and  discomfort.  Her  faults  of  form  and  phrase 
are  never  the  faults  of  smailness  ;  it  Mould  have  been  an 
honour  to  have  known  her.  Often  Ave  feel  we  would  rather  have 
known  her  than  read  her  ;  this  is  when  the  faults  become  too 
disastrous.  But  on  her  life,  as  well  as  on  the  golden,  the  excep- 
tional, passages  of  her  verse,  it  is  good  to  dwell. 


NOTES 

p.  v.  Goethe.  The  passage  is  given  by  G.  Herzfeld,  .-Ins  H.  C.  R.'s 
Naeh-lass  [i.e.  the  MS.  in  Dr.  Williams's  Library,  Gordon  Square],  in  Archie 
fur  t/os  Studium  der  nnieren  Sprachm,  vol.  cxx.  (new  series,  vol.  xx.), 
p.  31  (1804).  It  is  not  in  T.  Sadler's  Diary,  etc.,  of  Crabb  Robinson,  which  is 
only  a  selection  from  the  mass.  Goethe  spoke  in  reference  to  his  antipathy  to 
Egyptians.     Crabb  Robinson,  of  course,  reports  in  his  own  English. 

p.  6.  rhythm.  See  G.  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Eng.  Prose  Rhythm,  1912  ; 
chs.  x.  and  xi.  cover  this  period.  My  obligations  to  them  throughout  this  work 
are  large,  and  may  be  cordially  acknowledged  in  advance. 

p.  8.  Carlyle.  Bibliography,  R.  H.  Shepherd  [1881]  ;  and  by  J.  P.  Ander- 
son in  R.  Garnett,  Life  of  T.  C,  1887.  Many  edd.  of  Works,  the  fullest 
being  H.  D.  Traill's,  31  vols.,  1897-1901.  Chief  biographical  sources  : 
Reminiscences,  ed.  C.  E.  Norton,  2  vols.,  1887  (not  Froude's  incorrect  ed. 
of  1881)  ;  Early  Letters  of  C.  [to  1826],  ed.  Norton,  2  vols.,  1886  ;  Letters 
[1826-36],  ed.  Norton,  2  vols.,  1888.  The  last  two  works  reprint,  amidst 
many  more,  some  of  the  letters  already  used,  often  inaccurately,  by  J.  A. 
Froude  in  his  T.  C;  a  Hist  of  the  first  40  Years  of  his  Life  {1795-18S5\ 
2  vols.,  1882,  and  in  his  T.  C.  ;  a  Hist,  of  his  Life,  in  London  (1881,-lSsl  , 
•2  vols.,  1884.  There  is  also  a  popular  ed.  of  these  four  vols.  They  remain 
the  official  biography,  which  must  be  corrected  as  to  facts  and  impressions  from 
the  rest  of  the  first-hand  evidence,  e.g.  :  Letters  of  T.  C.  to  his  Younger  Sister, 
intr.  C.  T.  Copeland,  1899  ;  New  Letters  of  T.  C,  ed.  Alexander  Carlyle, 
2  vols.,  1904  ;  Corr.  of  V.  and  R.  W.  Emerson,  1834-72,  2  vols.,  ed.  Norton, 
1883.  There  is,  besides,  the  correspondence  of  Mrs.  Carlyle  :  her  Letters  and 
Memorials,  ed.  Froude,  3  vols.,  1883  ;  these  again  must  be  read  in  the  light  of 
her  Early  Letters,  etc.,  ed.  D.  G.  Ritchie,  1889  ;  of  The  Love  Letters  of  T.  C. 
and  Jane,  Welsh,  ed.  Alex.  Carlyle,  2  vols.,  1909  ;  and  of  New  Letters  and 
Memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  2  vols.,  1903,  ed.  Alex.  Carlyle,  introd. 
by  Sir  J.  Crichton-Browne.  For  the  alleged  pathological  side  of  the  business, 
those  who  have  a  mind  to  do  so  may  turn  to  the  reft',  at  end  of  the  art. 
'  Carlyle '  in  Ency.  Brit.,  eleventh  ed.  ;  but  I  feel  as  if  I  had  read  that  litera- 
ture in  defiance  of  the  astounded  shade  of  Carlyle  and  also,  still  more,  of  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  (cf.  'I  knew  the  lady  ;  and,  if  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  indigna- 
tion in  the  unseen  world  over  aught  that  passes  here  below,  O  what  a  face  I 
see,  what  a  voice  I  hear,  as  she  looks  down  on  this  transaction  ! '  So  Masson, 
C.  Personally,  p.  17,  as  to  Froude  :  but  the  words  apply  still  more  now). 
Shorter  accounts,  appraisals,  etc.,  are  too  many  to  recite  ;  but  see  J.  NichoPs 


40fi  NOTES 

vol.  in  Eng.  Men  of  Letters,  1892  ;  Mazzini's  articles  (1843)  in  vol.  iv.  of  Lift 
and  Writings,  1864-70  ;  and  Taine,  Hist,  de  la  Littcratvre  anylaise,  vol.  iv. 

p.  9.  witnesses.  E.g.,  Memories  of  Old  Friends  .  .  .  of  Caroline  Fox, 
ed.  II.  N.  Pym,  1881  ;  F.  Espinasse,  Lit.  Reeolls.  and  Sketches,  1893, 
pp.  55-272  ;  F.  Harrison,  Memories  curl  Thoughts,  1906  ;  W.  Allingham,  a 
Diary,  1907,  passim;  Sir  ( '.  G.  Daffy,  Conversations  with  C,  1892.  See  too 
Lecky,  Hist,  and  Pol.  Essay*,  pp.  101  foil.,  'Carlyle  as  a  Moral  Force,' and 
many  notes  of  interest  in  the  Memoir  (1909)  of  Lecky  by  Mrs.  Lecky.  The 
reference  from  Varnhagen  von  Ense  in  text,  p.  9.  is  given  in  Last  Words  of 
T.  C,  1892,  p.  287  ;  there  also,  p.  289,  is  the  tale  of  Carlyle,  when  Goethe  was 
being  criticised  for  ungodliness,  asking  the  company,  'in  seiner  schwerfalligen 
laugsamen  Weise  und  in  seinem  ungeschickten  Deutsch  mit  lauter  Stimme,  'did 
they  know  the  old  tale  of  the  man  who  blamed  the  sun  because  he  could  not 
light  his  cigar  at  it  V     '  Die  Anwesenden  schwiegen  erschrocken  '  etc. 

or"  o  7 

p.  11.  Goethe.  Core,  betveen  G.  and  Carlyle,  ed.  Norton,  1887,  Eng.  tr.  ; 
Eckermann's  Conversations  vjitli  G.,  July  1827  and  11  Oct.  1828.  See  too  my 
Survey  (1912;,  ii.  406. 

p.  12.  the  German  school.  Not  Carlyle's  own  words,  but  the  substance  as 
given  by  Dowden,-  Transcripts  and  Studies  (1887  and  1896),  ed.  1896,  pp.  38-9, 
of  the  twelfth  lecture  'On  the  Periods  of  European  Culture,'  from  a  report 
unspecified.  For  a  first-hand  statement  see  Espinasse,  Lit.  Recoils.,  pp.  58-60, 
letter  dated  28  Aug.  1841  :  'It  is  many  years  since  I  ceased  reading  German  or 
any  other  metaphysics,  and  gradually  came  to  discern  that  I  had  happily  got 
done  with  that  matter  altogether  .  .  .  metaphysics  is  but  a  kind  of  disease,  and 
the  inquiry  itself  a  kind  of  disease.  We  shall  never  know  '•  what  we  are  "  :  on 
the  other  hand,  we  can  always  partly  know,  what  beautiful  or  noble  things  we 
are  fit  to  do,  and  that  is  the  grand  inquiry  for  us.' 

p.  13.  Plato.  New  Letters  (1904),  No.  277,  27  Aug.  1856,  to  Dr.  Carlyle  ; 
ii.  180-1.  Cp.  the  cool  sayings  on  Socrates  quoted  by  Dowden,  Transcripts, 
p.  12,  from  the  lectures  named  in  last  note  :  '  his  writings  seem  to  be  made  up 
of  a  number  of  very  wiredrawn  notions  about  virtue  ;  there  is  no  conclusion  in 
him  ;  there  is  no  word  of  life  in  Socrates.  He  was,  however,  personally  -a 
coherent  and  firm  man.' 

p.  15,  note  1.  Sartor.  Careful  searching  ed.  by  A.  MacMechan,  1896, 
Boston,  U.S.A.  (Athenaiuun  Press  series)  ;  others,  also  useful,  by  J.  A.  S. 
Barrett,  1910,  and  P.  C.  Parr,  1913.  Editors  show  how  portions,  little  changed, 
of  the  odd,  highly  Teutonic,  and  mostly  mawkish  romance  by  Carlyle,  Wottou 
Reinfred,  were  transferred  to  the  biographic  part  of  Sartor.  The  avoiI;  is 
printed  in  Last  Words  of  T.  C,  1892. 

p.  15,  note  2.  early  letters.  See  especially  those  of  1814-21  in  Norton's  ed.  ; 
that  of  Dec  15,  1819  (i.  259)  shows  the  young  Caxlyle  strongly  stirred  by  the 
troubles  of  the  poor  (in  the  'Glasgow  rising'),  and  already  detaching  himself 
from  ordinary  radicalism.     So  Early  Letters,  May  5,  1820  (i.  303). 

p.  IS.  French  Revolution.  Re-ed.,  with  introd.  and  notes,  by  J.  Holland 
Rose,  3  vols.,  1902,  and  also  (intr.  and  notes)  by  C.  R.  L.  Fletcher,  3  vols., 
1902.  See  also  the  preface  to  H.  Morse  Stephen's  Hist,  of  the  Fr.  Eevol., 
3  vols.,  1897,  on  the  authorities  used  by  Carlyle  ;  and  remarks  by  Lord  Acton, 
Lectures  on  the  Tr.  Revol.,  1910,  p.  358  :  '  The  usual  modest  resources  of  a 
private  library  satisfied  his  requirements  ;  but  the  vivid  gleams,  the  mixture  of 


NOTES  407 

the  sublime  with  the  grotesque,  make  other  opponents  forget  the  impatient 
verdicts  and  the  poverty  of  solid  fact  in  the  volumes  that  delivered  our  fore- 
fathers from  thraldom  to  Burke.' 

p.  20.  Cromwell.  The  Letters  and  Sj)eeches  have  been  fully  overhauled  and 
re-edited,  with  addenda,  by  Mrs.  S.  C.  Lomas,  3  vols.,  1904.  Valuable  intro- 
duction by  C.  H.  Firth,  e.g.  p.  xxx  :  '  he  could  never  surrender  himself  to  bis 
subject,  because  be  was  continually  summoned  from  the  past  by  the  importunate 
problems  of  the  present ;  because  he  was  a  prophet  and  a  poet  by  nature,  and  a 
historian  only  by  accident.'  On  the  material  gathered  up  in  Historical  Sketches, 
etc.,  ed.  Alex.  Carlyle,  1902,  see  post,  p.  408  (note  to  i.  37),  concerning  Alex- 
ander Leighton. 

p.  21.  Cromwell  and  assemblies.     See  Firth,  op.  cit.  ;  and  Gardiner,  Crom- 
well's Place  in  History,  1897,  p.  46,  etc. 

p.  24.   Carlyle  and  Fichte.      See  above  all  C.  Vaughan,  'Carlyle  and  his 
German  Masters,'  in  Essays  and  Studies  by  Members  of  the  English  Association, 
1910,  pp.  186-96 — a  paper  that  for  the  first  time  defines  the  debt  plainly  :  also 
R.  Adamson,  Fichte,  1881,  pp.  79-80.     These  and  some  other  reff.  are  embodied 
in  the  following  : — In  Aug.  1827  {Letters,  ed.  Norton,  i.  72,  and  cp.  Froude, 
Early  Life,  ed.  1890,  i.  385)  Carlyle  is  '  reading  somewhat  of  Fichte,  Schelling, 
etc. ' ;  and  his  essay,  State  of  German  Lit.  (Misc.,  vol.  i.),  appeared  in  the  Edin- 
burgh in  Oct.      He  there  [acknowledges  Das  Wesen  des  Gelehrten  (delivered 
in  Erlangen,  1805)  ;   his  translations  and   allusions  seem  all  to  refer  to  the 
first  discourse.     The  whole  can  be  read  in  F.'s  Popular  Works,  Eng.  tr.  by 
Wm.  Smith,  ed.  4,  1889,  2  vols.,  esp.  i.  209-32.     For  F.  on  mysticism  (impatient 
bankrupt  anti-rationalism),  see  ib.,  ii.  324  ff.,  in  The  Doctrine  of  Religion  ; 
Carlyle,  loc.  cit.,  absolves  Fichte  from  the  charge  of  being  the  wrong  sort  of 
mystic.     He  was  still  thinking  of  Fichte  (as  a  'resolute  Liberal')  in  1840,  on 
8  Oct.  (New  Letters,  i.  216-17)  ;  and  in  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters,  ad.  init.,  uttered 
19  May  1840,  had  repeated  the  same  old  passage  from  the  Wesen  des  Gelehrten- 
Nothing  proves  that  Carlyle  read  anything  else  of  Fichte's  ;  but  the  division  of 
the  Heroes  into  King,  Prophet,  etc.,  seems  to  start  from  that  of  the  functions  of 
the  Gelehrte  ;   the  exaltation  in  Sartor,  etc.,  of  '  blessedness '  (Seligheit)  over 
'  happiness '  as  a  worthy  end  is  thoroughly  Fichtean  :  and,  as  Prof.  Vaughan 
shows,  the  doctrine  of  the  strong  ruler  is  even  more  so,  and  is  vehemently 
asserted  in  the  Staatslehre  (Vaughan,  p.  194).     This  is  at  least  a  striking  coin- 
cidence, and  there  are  traces  of  the  same  spirit  already  in  the  Wesen  des  Gel. 
(Pop.  Works,  i.  213  :  'with  labourers  and  hodmen  it  is  otherwise,  their  virtue 
consists  in  punctual  obedience,'  etc.).     My  knowledge  of  Fichte  is  insufficient 
for  carrying  the  matter  further  ;  but  a  likeness  may  be  noted  between  Fichte's 
manhandling  of  Rousseau  (Lect.  v.  of  the  different  and  earlier  discourses  on  the 
Vocation  (Bestimmung)  of  the  Scholar,  given  in  1794  in  Jena),  and  Carlyle's  in 
The  Hero  as  Man  of  Letters  ;  and  lastly,  Carlyle's  whole  cpiarrel  with  the  age 
of  logic,  mechanism,  and   utilitarian  morals  compares  with   Fichte's  capital 
sentence  on  the  Aufkldrung,  or  'third  age,'  in  Characteristics  of  the  Present 
Age,  1804  (Pop.    Works,  vol.  ii.,  lects.  v.-viii.)  ;   see  Carlyle's  Characteristics, 
1831  (Misc.,  vol.  iv.),  a  paper  which  is  full  of  Fichtean  doctrine  in  solution. 

p.   25.    Icelandic.      See  the  tribute  to   Carlyle  in   Vigftisson   and   Powell's 
Corpus  Poeticvm  Boreale,  Oxford,  1883,  vol.  i.  p.  ci. 


408  NOTES 

p.  26.  Jocelin.  The  Chronich  has  been  translated  by  Sir  Ernest  Clarke, 
1907,  with  all  elucidations. 

p.  28.  Shooting  Niagara.  Some  of  these  later  tirades  ('The  Repeal  of  the 
Union,'  and  other  Irish  papers,  and  'Trees  of  Liberty')  are  reprinted  in 
Rescued  Essays  by  T.  C,  ed.  Percy  Newberry,  n.d. 

p.  31.  might  and  right.  See  Past  and  Present,  ch.  ii.  :  'Await  the  issue. 
In  all  battles,  if  you  await  the  issue,  each  tighter  has  prospered  according  to  his 
right.  His  right  and  his  might,  at  the  close  of  the  account,  were  one  and  the 
same.  He  has  fought  with  all  his  might,  and  in  exact  proportion  to  all  his 
right  he  has  prevailed.  His  very  death  is  no  victory  over  him.  He  dies  indeed, 
but  his  work  lives,  very  truly  lives.'  Nobly  meant  and  phrased  ;  but  could 
confusion  go  further  ?  Who,  in  this  case,  are  the  mighty  ?  The  test  of  success 
is  abandoned,  and  no  standard  of  might  remains  except  the  righteousness  of  the 
cause.  For  a  close  logical  criticism  of  this  point,  see  (Sir)  Leslie  Stephen, 
Hours  in  a  Library,  ed.  1889,  series  iii., '  Carlyle's  Ethics  '  ;  and,  for  an  histori- 
cal analysis  of  Carlyle's  political  creed  in  relation  to  the  thought  of  the  time,  see 
the  luminous  pages  in  L.  Cazamian,  Le  Roman  social  en  Angleterre  (1830-50), 
1904,  pp.  150-164  ;  I  shall  again  cite  this  authority. 

p.  33.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison.  In  his  Memories  and  Thoughts,  1906, 
pp.  99-100. 

p.  37.  Leighton.  From  Historical  Sketches  .  .  .  in  the  Reigns  of  James  the 
First  and  Charles  the  First,  1898,  p.  242  (ed.  Alexander  Carlyle)  :  of  this 
material,  what  was  not  used  up  for  the  Cromwell  was  buried  away,  unearthed 
long  afterwards,  and  sifted,  by  leave  of  the  author,  who  would  have  no  more  to 
do  with  it,  by  John  Chorley.  These  fragments  are  often  in  no  way  behind 
Carlyle's  best  writing.  For  Leighton,  see  Gardiner,  Hist,  of  England, 
1603-16Jf2,  vii.  143  ff. 

p.  41.  philosophy.  For  the  ideas  and  historical  importance  of  the  thinkers 
named  in  this  chapter  and  the  next,  see  above  all  H.  Hoffding,  Hist,  of  Mod. 
Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.,  1900,  2  vols.,  ii.  293-488.  Also  J.  Seth,  Eng.  Philo- 
sophers and  Schools  of  Philosophy,  1912,  pp.  240-end  ;  and  W.  R.  Sorley,  in 
Camb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit,  vol.  xiv.  ch.  i.  A.  W.  Benn's  Hist,  of  Eng.  Rationalism 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  2  vols.,  1906,  is  a  chronicle  of  great  value,  which  I 
have  also  used  freely.  For  some  links  with  the  philosophers  of  the  previous 
age,  see  my  Survey  (1912),  chaps,  viii.  and  ix. 

p.  45.  Mansel.  Misc.  writings,  including  Phrontisterion,  collected  in  Letters, 
Lectures,  and  Reviews,  ed.  H.  W.  Chandler,  1873.  They  cover  the  years 
1850-71.  The  paper  'On  the  Philosophy  of  Kant'  contains  Mansel's  tribute  to 
his  master  Hamilton  (pp.  183-4);  in  that  on  'Modern  Spiritualism'  (pp. 
255-90)  he  operates  well  on  'Mr.  Sludge,  the  Medium.'  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of 
Eng.  Prose  Rhythm,  pp.  416-20,  469,  renders  deserved  and  much-needed  justice, 
to  Mansel's  numbers.  See  Benn,  Rationalism,  ii.  103-112.  for  an  effective,  and  I 
think  merited,  attack  on  Mansel's  metaphysics  ;  but  his  power  as  a  writer  and 
preacher  is  ignored. 

p.  46.  Ferrier.  Lectures  on  Greek  Philosophy,  and  other  Philosophical 
Remains,  2  vols.,  1875,  ed.  Sir  A.  Grant  and  E.  L.  Lushington  (memoir  by  the 
latter)  ;  uniform  with  this,  last  ed.  of  the  Institutes,  with  appendix  and 
rejoinders  to  criticisms.  In  Berkeley  and  Idealism  is  clearly  seen  the  germ  of 
the   system,  with   its   essential   distinction   between    nonentity  or   non-reality 


NOTES  409 

on  the  one  side,  and  the  contradictory,  nonsensical,  or  '  surd,-'  on  the  other  ; 
into  this,  and  not  into  zero,  'matter'  relapses  without  a  perceiving  subject 
human  or  divine.  See  Elizabeth  S.  Haidane,  J.  F.  Ferrier  [1899],  which  gives, 
besides  biographical  detail,  an  excellent  account  of  Ferrier  in  his  setting  among 
the  Scottish  philosophers,  his  attack  on  the  '  common  sense '  school,  etc. 

p.  48.  John  Stuart  Mill.  Sources  for  Mill's  life,  besides  the  Autobiography, 
are  :  Letters  of  J.  S.  H.,  ed.,  with  introduction,  by  Hugh  S.  R.  Elliot  (with  a 
note  on  Mill's  private  life  by  Mary  Taylor),  2  vols.,  1910  ;  J.  S.  M.,  a  Criticism, 
with.  Personal  Recollections,  by  A.  Bain,  1882  (see  material  in  the  opening 
chapters  for  early  life)  ;  the  Carlyle  literature  ;  Caroline  Fox,  Memories  of  Old 
Friends,  ed.  H.  N.  Pym,  revised  ed.,  1883;  John  [Lord]  Morley,  Critical 
Miscellanies,  second  series,  1877  (three  articles)  :  also  his  Recollections,  1917, 
i.  52-67.  Other  letters  of  Mill  occur  in  the  biographies  of  Kingsley,  Grote, 
and  Spencer.  Among  other  accounts  of  Mill  see  above  all  that  of  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  The  English  Utilitarians,  vol.  iii.,  1900  ;  also  Taine's  two  studies,  Le 
Pos  itivisme  anglais,  1864,  and  the  chapter  in  Hist,  de  la  Litthature  anglaise 
18G3-(4),  torn.  iv.  ;  some  excellent  pages  in  Hoffding,  Hist,  of  Mod.  Philosophy, 
Eng.  tr.,  1900,  ii.  394-433  ;  W.  L.  Courtney,  Life  of  J.  S.  M.,  n,d.  [?1889],  in 
'Great  Writers'  series;  C.  Douglas,  J.  S.  M„  a  Study,  etc.,  1895;  and  J. 
MacCunn,  Six  Radical  Thinkers,  1910. 

p.  50,  note  1.  Mrs.  Mill.  See  Autobiography,  and  the  letters  written  after 
her  death  by  Mill  ;  dedication  to  Liberty  ;  and  the  views  of  friends  in  Bain,  op. 
cit.,  and  in  the  letters  of  the  Carlyles  ;  also  the  note  in  journal,  given  iu  Letter*, 
iL  361. 

p.  50,  note  2.  Brandes.  1  translate  from  the  Samlede  Skrifter,  popular  ed., 
1901,  Heft  68,  pp.  531-46. 

p.  51.  correspondence  with  Carlyie.  In  Letters,  i.  32-99  ;  the  last  is  dated 
28  April  1834,  but  the  association  went  on  much  longer.  In  1869  (iL  220-1) 
Mill  writes  :  '  It  is  only  at  a  particular  stage  in  one's  mental  development  that 
one  benefits  much  by  him  (to  me  he  was  of  great  use  at  that  stage),  but  one 
continues  to  read  his  best  things  with  little,  if  any,  diminution  of  pleasure  after 
one  has  ceased  to  learn  anything  from  him.'  In  1854  (note  of  Jan.  21,  Letters, 
ii.  361),  Mill  says,  'Carlyle  has  written  himself  out,  and  become  a  mere 
commentator  on  himself.'  See  too  Gavan  Duffy,  Conversations  with  C, 
pp.  166-70. 

p.  52,  note  1.  Saint-Simonians.  See  especially  Con:  inedite  avec  G.  d'Eich- 
thal,  1898,  pp.  13,  29  ft'.  (1829). 

p.  52,  note  2.  Mill  and  Comte.  See  Letters  ;  Autobiog.  ;  and  Letfres  inrditts 
de  J.  S.  M.  a  A.  Comte,  1899,  ed.  L.  Levy-Bruhl.  Mill  writes  in  French  ; 
Comte's  replies  are  given.  The  personal  dealings  and  disputes  of  Comte  with 
his  English  benefactors  are  equitably  summed  up  by  Bain,  op.  cit.,  pp.  70-6. 
See  too  Benn,  Rationalism,  i.  408-50,  on  'Comte,  Carlyle,  and  Mill.' 

p.  54.  Mill's  earlier  reviews.  I  have  found  no  full  bibliographical  list.  See 
Early  Essays  of  J.  S.  M.,  selected  by  J.  W.  M.  Gibbs,  1897.  These  are  from 
the  original  periodicals,  and  include  a  number  not  reprinted  in  Diss<  rt.  and  Disc. 
p.  56,  note  1.  causation.  For  attacks  on  Mill's  view  by  theologians  see  the 
Roman  Catholic  W.  G.  Ward's  Essays  on  Philos.  of  Theism,  vol.  i.  ;  and  the 
Anglican  J.  B.  Mozley'.s  Eight  [Bampton]  Lectures  on  Miracles,  1865,  especially 
note  2,  p.  279,  and  note  4,  p.  295. 


410  NOTES 

p.  56,  note  2.  inductive  process.  See  W.  R.  Sorley,  Camb.  Eng.  Lit.,  xiv.  17, 
and  his  whole  account  of  Mill. 

p.  58.  von  Sybel.  In  Vortrdge  und  Aufsdtse,  1874,  p.  61,  in  the  article 
'  I'ober  die  Emanzipation  von  Frauen,' a,  reply  to  the  Subjection.  Von  Sybel 
makes  this  remark  on  Mill's  picture  of  the  despotic  husband  ;  otherwise  he  has 
little  fresh  to  say  ;  he  repeats  Stephen's  plea  that  one  housemate  must  decide  in 
doubtful  cases,  and  that  this  mvst  be  the  man.  Me  takes  the  Prussian  view  of 
tin'  Hausfrait,  with  streaks  of  sentimentalism,  and  shows  on  first  principles  that 
women  can  never  do  many  things,  which  they  have  visibly  and  actually  done. 

p.  61,  note  1.  'Philip  Bcauchamp.'  This  symptomatic  work  should  have  been 
named  in  my  Survey  (1912).  It  is  called  Analysis  of  the  Influence  of  Natural 
Religion  on  the  Temporal  Haziness  of  Marikind  ;  first  ed.  1822,  afterwards 
privately  reprinted  by  Grote,  1866.  A  full  account  is  given  by  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  Eng.  Utilitarians,  ii.  339-59  (the  vol.  on  James  Mill) ;  and  he,  having 
seen  Benthain's  MS.  in  the  B.  M.,  thinks  'that  Grote's  share  in  the  work  was  a 
good  deal  more  than  mere  editing.'  The  book  is,  as  he  says,  most  forcibly 
written,  and  is  by  iimolieation  an  assault  on  all,  and  not  only  on  'natural,' 
theology.  It  dwells  on  the  futility  of  supernatural  sanctions  to  affect  motive, 
save  in  so  far  as  they  pervert  it  ;  and  so  reduces  actual  religion  to  superstition 
and  to  the  work  of  priests — 'a  particular  class  of  persons  incurably  opposed  to 
the  interests  of  humanity.'  It  is  an  early  and  curious  application  to  religion  of 
the  canon  of  '  experience '  ;  all  the  inferences  of  '  natural  religion ;  are  described 
as  '  extra-experimental.'     The  publisher  was  Richard  Carlile. 

p.  61,  note  2.  Whewell.  See  the  paper  of  1851,  reprinted  in  Diss,  and  Disc, 
vol.  ii.,  with  its  lively  attack  on  the  old  universities  ;  which,  in  Mill's  eyes,  are 
devoted  to  buttressing  conservative  principles  by  the  process  of  'adapting'  the 
German  philosophers.  Whewell  figures  as  a  ringleader  in  this  attempt.  I  have 
barely  named  him  (William  Whewell,  1794-1866,  Master  of  Trinity  ;  History 
of  the.  Inductive  Sciences,  1837,  Philosoplty  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  1840,  and 
much  else)  in  my  text ;  he  hardly  figures  in  letters,  and  is  seldom  cited  as  a 
thinker,  though  his  History  is  accounted  of  value.  A  pleasing  epigram  on 
Whewell's  Plurality  of  Worlds,  by  Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle,  will  bear  re- 
quotation  : 

Should  man,  through  the  stars,  to  far  galaxies  travel, 
Aud  of  nebulous  films  the  remotest  unravel, 
He  still  could  but  learn,  having  fathomed  infinity, 
That  the  great  work  of  Cod  was — the  Master  of  Trinity. 

p.  66,  note  1.  Vestiges  of  Creation.  See  the  twelfth  ed.,  1884,  with  introd. 
by  Alexander  Ireland,  who  was  one  of  Chambers's  few  confidants  and  his  inter- 
mediary in  dealing  with  the  publisher.'  This  interesting  and  venerable  gentle- 
man, Mr.  Ireland,  who  lived  to  a  great  age  in  Manchester,  had  in  his  youth 
seen  Scott,  had  twice  been  associated  with  the  management  of  Emerson's  circuit 
in  England,  and  was  full  of  recollections  of  the  Carlyles  :  a  living  link  also,  as 
we  see,  Avith  pre-Darwinian  days. 

p.  66,  note  2.  Darwin.  Life  and  Letters,  including  an  autohiog.  chapter,  ed. 
Francis  Darwin,  3  vols.,  1887.  The  relationship  with  Lyell  is  seen  in  the  letters, 
and  in  Huxley's  chapter  in  Life.  Darwin's  religious  ideas  are  collected  in 
vol.  i.,  ch.  viii.  For  a  touch  of  Ids  humour,  see  ii.  385  sq.  (1862)  in  reference  to 
the  House  of  Lords:  'Primogeniture  is  most  dreadfully  opposed  to  selection  ; 


NOTES  411 

suppose  the  first-born  bull  was  specially  made  by  each  farmer  the  begetter  of 
his  stock  !  On  the  other  hand,  as  you  say,  the  ablest  men  are  continually 
raised  to  the  peerage,  and  get  crossed  with  the  older  Lord-breeds,  and  the  Lords 
continually  select  the  most  beautiful  and  charming  women  from  the  lower  ranks  ; 
so  that  a  good  deal  of  indirect  selection  improves  the  Lord?.' 

p.  67.  Wallace.  Most  of  his  writings  outside  the  sphere  of  zoology  date  after 
1880.  In  some  he  defends  spiritualism,  in  one  the  state  ownership  of  land 
(1882) ;  and  he  opposed  vaccination.  His  speculative  bent,  is  seen  in  Man's 
Place  in  the  Universe  (1903),  and  two  years  later  came  his  striking  autobio- 
graphy, My  Life.  Wallace's  vitality  and  his  range  of  interest  and  power  are 
surprising,  and  he  is  one  of  the  most  vigorous  warriors  of  the  great  age. 

p.  70,  note  1.  Spencer.  The  bibliography,  which  is  rather  intricate  owing  to 
the  number  of  recasts  and  transferences,  is  given  by  D.  Duncan,  Life  and 
Letters  of  H.  S.,  1908,  and  summarised  in  D.  N.  B.,  Suppl.  ii.  (art.  by  H.  S. 
R.  Elliot ;  where  see  too  retf.  to  Spencer  literature).  Duncan's  biography 
supplements  the  Autobiography  (1904)  materially,  and,  while  bringing  out 
Spencer's  minuter  weaknesses,  also  shows  him  in  a  happier  and  more  affectionate 
light  than  he  does  himself.  W.  H.  Hudson's  Introd.  to  the  Philosophy  of  H.  &, 
1895,  is  useful.  F.  Howard  Collins,  Epitome  of  the  Synthetic  Philosophy 
(1889),  the  authorised  digest,  is  ample,  accurate,  and  hard  to  read.  The  Lives 
of  Huxley,  Darwin,  and  George  Eliot,  etc.,  are  full  of  personal  references. 
There  is  no  better  critical  summary  of  Spencers  thought  than  in  H.  Hofi'ding, 
Hist,  of  Mod.  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.,  1900,  ii.  452-85  ;  and  for  a  criticism  of  what 
Benn  regards  his  latent  'teleology,'  see  Rationalism,  ii.  204-35.  See  too  W.  R. 
Sorley,  Camb.  Eng.  Lit,  xiv.  2~~'-l2. 

p.  70,  note  2.  landmarks.  Details  are  given  at  length  in  Autoh.,  especially 
ii.  8-10,  166-70,  the  stages  by  which  Spencer's  governing  idea  dawned  on  him 
and  reached  completion  being  specified  and  dated  ;  see  too  the  reff.  given  by 
F.  C.  S.  Schiller  in  Ency.  Brit.,  eleventh  ed.,  xxv.  637,  and  the  whole  article. 
The  programme  of  the  synthetic  philosophy,  as  at  first  schemed,  is  given  at  the 
beginning  of  Eirst  Pi-inciples,  and  in  Autob.,  ii.  479  ff.  (App.  A). 

p.  71.  authority.  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  H.8.  (in  'English  Men  of  Science 
series),  190G,  ch.  viii.  foil.,  describes  the  work  (p.  93)  as  'a  biological  classic, 
which,  in  its  range  and  intensity,  finds  no  parallel  except  in  Haeckel's  greatest 
and  least  known  work,  the  Generelle  Morphologie,  which  was  published  in  186ft 
about  the  same  time  as  the  Principles.'  Prof.  Thomson's  review  of  Spencer, 
and  that  not  merely  on  the  scientific  side,  is  grateful  to  the  lay  reader. 

p.  12.  No  contemptuous  title.    Essay*,  ii.  199  (Represent.  Government,  1857). 

p.  74,  note  1.  Matthew  Arnold.  In  God  and  the  Bible,  ch.  v.  (passage  dropped 
in  popular  ed.)  he  jibes  (quoting  a  line  of  Homer  in  contrast)  at  the  'great 
sentence.'  Spencer's  retort,  given  in  text,  is  in  First  Principles,  fifth  ed.  (1880), 
p.  570  (appendix).  The  'sentence'  comes  at  end  of  ch.  xvii.,  and  lias  often  been 
cited,  but  may  appear  once  more  as  an  example  of  technical  English  :  '  Evolution 
is  an  integration  of  matter  and  concomitant  dissipation  of  motion  ;  during  which 
the  matter  passes  from  an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity  ;  and  during  which  the  retained  motion  undergoes  a 
parallel  transformation.'  Of  course  Matthew  Arnold  was  wrontr ;  the  definition, 
right  or  not,  is  worded  in  the  only  way  that  cau  express  the  idea,  as  the  reader 
of  Fust  Principles  will  see. 


412  NOTES 

p.  74,  note  2.  Comtism  in  England.  .See  too  bibliographies  in  Eucy.  Brit. 
s.v.  '  Conite,'  and  in  Camb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit.,  vol.  xiv.,  ch.  i.  s.vv.  '  Beesly, 
Bridges,  Congreve,  H.  Martineau,  Lowes. — A  small  but  typical  case  of  Comtek 
influence  can  be  read  in  the  autobiographical  ch.  prefixed  to  W.  M.  Wilks  Call's 
Reverberations,  1849  and  1876,  a  book  of  verse.  Call  was  first 'disturbed' by 
reading  Shelley  and  Cain,  and  then  by  'the  subtle  Hume'  and  James  Mill  : 
was  quieted  awhile  by  reading  Coleridge,  and  took  Anglican  orders  ;  read  Baur, 
and  began  to  doubt  Moses,  and  also  the  fact  of  eternal  perdition  ;  then,  owing 
to  Strauss  and  J.  S.  Mill,  ceased  to  credit  miracles  ;  held  fast  for  a  time  to  a 
'natural  Christianity,'  but  lost  even  that  'residuary  faith';  and  at  last  found 
peace  in  the  religion  of  humanity,  as  supplying  'an  object  to  action,  a  rule  of 
conduct,  an  intellectual  rallying-point '  ;  quitting  the  Church  accordingly.  Call 
is  all  the  more  representative  for  not  being  a  very  original  person.  His  Golden 
Histories,  1871,  contains  the  more  than  pretty  poem  The  Bird  in  the  Bower,  the 
once  popular  Manoli,  and  also  some  translations  (e.g.  of  the  Hymn  to  Demeter). 

p.  75,  note  1.  Life  of  Goethe.  It  has  been  reprinted  in  a  cheap  form,  but 
ought  to  be  edited  and  brought  up  to  date  ;  Prof.  J.  G.  Robertson  informs  me 
that  this  has  not  yet  been  done  ;  and  the  task  awaits  some  such  competent 
hand. 

p.  75,  note  2.  Huxley.  Life,  and  Letters,  by  his  son  Leonard  Huxley, 
2  vols.,  1900.  The  Scientific  Memoirs  are  in  four  large  vols,  (and  one  supple- 
mentary), 1898  foil.  Some  portions  of  these  appear,  where  of  general  interest, 
in  the  nine  vols,  of  Collected  Essays,  1893,  which  include  the  Hume  (in  Eng. 
Men  of  Letters  originally),  and  wherein  the  subjects  are  re-grouped,  not  as  in 
the  original  issues  (Lay  Sermons,  etc.).  Bibliography  in  Life,  ii.  453-70.  Many 
reft',  in  the  Darwin  and  Spencer  literature.  The  art.  by  Sir  William  T.  Thiselton- 
Dyer  in  Ency.  Brit,  eleventh  ed.,  xiv.  17-20,  contains  instructive  citations  of 
Huxley's  philosophical  views. 

p.  76.  give  a  push.  Spencer,  Antob.,  ii.  5.  Compare  the  letter  to  Spencer, 
May  8, 1888  (Life,  ii.  198-9)  :  '  You  and  I,  my  dear  friend,  have  had  our  innings, 
and  carry  our  bats  out  while  our  side  is  winning.  One  could  not  reasonably 
ask  for  more.' 

p.  78.  'agnostic'  Life,  i.  319-20;  and  Agnosticism,  1S89,  in  Coll.  Essays, 
\.  237-9.  The  term  occurred  to  Huxley  when  he  was  at  a  loss,  in  the  meetings 
of  the  '  Metaphysical  Society,'  founded  in  1869,  to  define  his  attitude  by  a 
title. 

p.  79,  note  1.  the  Bible.     In  Coll.  Essays,  vol.  iii.  ;  originally  in  Fort.  Rev., 
1870,  The  School  Boards;  and  quoted  in  Controverted  Questions,  1892,  p.  51 
See  too  s.v.  '  Bible-reading  in  elementary  schools,'  in  index  to  Life. 

p.  79,  note  2.  Goethe.  Huxley's  translation  was  published  in  the  first  number 
of  Nature,  Nov.  1869.  See  Life,  i.  326  ;  and  T.  Bailey  Saunders,  The  Maxims 
and  Reflections  of  Goethe,  1893,  preface,  p.  vi. 

p.  80,  note  1.  Eyre.  See  the  fierce  letters  in  Life,  ii.  279-83.  See  Mill, 
AiUobiog.,  pp.  298-9;  and  art.  'Eyre'  in  D.  N.  B.,  Suppl.  ii.  vol.  i.  ad  fin.  ; 
Eyre  lived  till  1901. 

p.  80,  note  2.  negro.  See  too  Emancipation — Black  and  Wliite,  1865  ; 
''Emancipate  girls,'  he  says,  when  he  passes  to  the  question  of  the  'white'  ;  but 
the  result,  he  believes,  is  that  '  women  will  find  their  place  .  .  .  Nature's  old 
salique  law  will  not  be  repealed.'     Women  will  always  be  weighted  :  'the  duty 


NOTES  413 

of  man  is  to  see  that  not  a  grain  is  piled  upon  that  load  beyond  what  Nature 
imposes  ;  that  injustice  is  not  added  to  inequality.' 

p.  81.  orang.  In  Science  and  Morals,  1886  ;  in  Coll.  Essays,  ix.  ;  Coniro- 
verted  (Questions,  pp.  214-15. 

p.  82.  Clifford.  Lectures  awl  Essays,  edited  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  and  Sir 
Frederick  Pollock,  2  vols..  19'Jl  ;  memoir,  in  vol.  i.,  by  the  latter;  q.v.  for  an 
utterance  of  the  'natural  religion  :  of  this  age  and  group  of  friends.  Clifford, 
even  more  than  his  comrades,  was  fiercely  and  naively  anti-clerical,  in  a  style 
that  led  Matthew  Arnold  to  say  that  Messrs.  Moody  and  Sankey  were,  compared 
with  him,  'masters  of  the  philosophy  of  history.1 

p.  84,  note  1.  conservative  thinkers.  For  an  attack  on  Stephen's  'naturalism' 
or  'agnostic  empiricism,'  see  A.  J.  Balfour,  Theism  and.  Humanism,  1915 
(Gifford  lectures),  pp.  140-6  ;  the  general  ground  being  that  with  the  naturalist, 
as  with  the  supernaturalist,  '  his  beliefs  will  always  transcend  his  arguments! 
So  reasoned  Newman  earlier. 

p.  84,  note  2.  Henry  Sidgwick.  See  the  Memoir,  1906,  '  by  A.  S[idgwick] 
and  E.  M.  S.  [Mrs.  Henry  Sidgwick]. ; 

p.  86.  aesthetic  feelings.  Theory  of  Practice,  2  vols.,  1870  ;  paces  of  dif- 
ferent rhythms  (dactylic,  etc.),  i.  150  sq.  ;  i.  170  sq.,  Fancy,  unlike  imagina- 
tion, does  not  try  to  'find  and  express  emotional  truth,'  but  to  'exercise  the 
faculty  of  comparison  of  images,  which  will  certainly  thus  be  coloured  by 
emotion  but  will  not  be  its  adequate  expression.'  i.  291  sq.,  in  poetry  'the  art 
of  imaginative  reasoning  and  emotion  go  hand  in  hand.'  ii.  270,  style  :  '  the 
more  transient  modifications  of  speech  by  trains  of  consciousness,  the  more 
flexible  details  within  the  limits  of  the  general  rules  of  inflexion  and 
syntax'  (this  follows  on  a  long  and  suggestive  account  of  the  logic  and 
psychology  of  the  parts  of  speech  and  of  inflexions) ;  see  too  the  account  of 
'eros,'  i.  196  sq. 

p.  87.  '  He  appealed  .  .  .:  \V.  R.  Sorley,  Camb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit.,  vol.  xiv. 
(1916),  p.  43. 

p.  92.  Fortnightly  Review.     See  Lord  Morley,  Recollections,  1917,  i.,  ch.  vi. 

p.  93.  Lewis.  Letters,  ed.  Sir  G.  F.  Lewis,  1870.  Political  Terms,  ed.  Sir 
T.  Raleigh,  1898.  Influence  of  Authority,  etc.,  new  ed.  1875.  The  rest  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  reprinted.  The  best  account  of  Lewis  is  that  of  W.  Eagehot, 
in  his  Biographical  Studies  (1863).  Lewis's  Origin  of  the  Romance  Languages, 
1 835,  and  hi?  Survey  of  the  Astronomy  of  the  Ancients,  1862,  are  proofs  of  his 
multifarious  erudition.  Essay  on  the.  Government  of  Dependencies,  ed.  C.  P. 
Lucas,  Oxford,  1891. 

p.  94.  Roman  ballad-poetry.  Enquiry,  etc..  i.  202-37  ;  on  Macanlay,  pp. 
217  tt'..  'one  of  ihe  last  persons  who  should  treat  brilliant  and  striking  passages 
in  a  prose  history,  glowing  with  poetical  warmth,  and  diversified  with  poetical 
imagery,  as  proofs  of  a  metrical  original'  (p.  221)  ;  see  too  on  the  Lays,  pp. 
23G-7. 

p.  95.  Buckle.  A.  H.  Huth,  Life  and.  Writings  of  B.,  1880.  The  Hist,  of 
Civilisation  has  been  edited  by  J.  M.  Robertson,  1904.  The  Misc.  and  Posth. 
Works,  ed.  Helen  Taylor,  3  vols.,  1872,  is  mostly  a  commonplace-book,  or  rag- 
bag of  notes  and  references,  with  a  memoir. 

p.  96,  note  1.  Lecky.  Memoir,  by  Mrs.  Lecky,  1909.  Historical  and  Poli- 
tical Essays,  posthumous,  1908.     The  standard  ed.  of  the  Hist,  of  England. 


414  NOTES 

mc,  is  now  in  7  vols.,  and  of  the,  Hist,  of  Ireland  in  5  vols.     Democracy  and 
Liberty,  two  vols.,  1806. 

p.  96,  note  2.  Lecky  and  Buckle.  For  exposure  of  the  fallacy  of  averages, 
see  Rationalism,  introduction  ;  Memoir,  p.  59,  for  acknowledgement  of  debt  ; 
id.,  p.  106,  'I  quite  think  with  Grote  that  the  master-error  of  Buckle  is  his 
absurd  underrating  of  the  accidents  of  history';  also  the  paper  'Formative 
Influences,'  in  Hist,  and  Pol.  Essays  (a  judicial  and  generous  summary). 

p.  96,  note  3.  science  of  history.  See  the  whole  passage,  Memoir,  p.  59  ; 
and  the  reference,  id.,  p.  54,  note,  to  Comte  in  this  connexion. 

p.  97.  accident  in  history,  hist,  of  England,  i.  17-19.  Lecky,  however, 
defines  'accident'  more  broadly;  'instances  in  which  a  slight  change  in  the 
disposition  of  circumstances,  or  in  the  action  of  individuals,  would  have  altered 
the  whole  course  of  history '  (e.g.  the  Jews  might  have  been  thus  extirpated, 
Greece  conquered  by  Xerxes,  Rome  by  Hannibal;  and  the  story  of  France 
would  have  been  different  if  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  had  succeeded  Louis  xiv.). 
This  idea  recurs  in  The  Political  Value  of  History,  1892,  pp.  32-3  :  'though 
there  is  a.  certain  steady  and  orderly  evolution  that  it  is  impossible  in  the  long 
run  to  resist,  yet  individual  action  and  even  accident  have  borne  a  very  great 
part  in  modifying  the  direction  of  history,  as  there  are  periods  when  the  human 
mind  is  in  such  a  state  of  pliancy  that  a  small  pressure  can  give  it  a  bent  which 
will  last  for  generations.  If  Mohammed  had  been  killed,'  etc. 
p.  99.  'judicious,'  etc.     Memoir,  p.  166. 

p.  100.  recast  of  Leaders  of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland.  The  work  first 
appeared,  almost  unregarded,  in  1861  ;  then  in  purged  and  revised  shape,  in 
1871  ;  became  suddenly  popular  before  1887,  and  was  quoted,  in  its  earlier 
discarded  shape,  by  pleaders  for  Home  Rule,  to  the  authors  annoyance  ;  and 
was  finally  recast  thoroughly  in  1903  (2  vols. :  see  introduction  for  above 
details;;  the  Swift,  meanwhile,  being  detached  and  also  revised,  and  now 
appearing  in  the  Prose  Works  of  Swift  (Bohn  ed.). 

p.  102.  Maine.  See  Sir  M.  E.  Grant-Duff,  Brief  Memoir  (with  some  of  the 
Indian  Speeches),  1892. 

p.  104.  Bagehot.  Works  and  Life,  ed.  Mrs.  Russell  Barrington,  10  vols., 
1914.  The  chief  works  are  easily  to  be  had  in  various  edd.  ;  but  the  collected 
ed.  contains  many  smaller  articles  of  interest,  e.g.  that  on  The.  Ignorance  of 
Man.     The  memoir  by  R.  II.  Hutton,  given  in  Works,  vol.  i.,  is  admirable. 

p.  109.  Macaulay.  The  definitive  (1908)  ed.  of  (Sir)  G.  0.  Trevelyans  Life 
and  Letters  of  Lord  M.  (1876)  contains  the  'Marginal  Notes,' also  published 
separately.  There  are  many  passing  allusions  in  the  correspondence  of  Moore, 
Lockhart,  Caroline  Fox,  etc.  See,  too,  Viscountess  Knutsford,  Life  and  Letters 
of  Zachary  M.,  1900.  The  art.  by  Mark  Pattison  in  Ency.  Brit.  (eds.  9  and  11) 
is  of  note  :  likewise  the  vol.  by  J.  ("otter  Morison,  1885  ('Kng.  Men  of  Letters'), 
though  somewhat  superfine  in  criticism.  To  the  well-known  judgements  by 
Bagehot  in  Lit.  Studies  and  by  Sir  L.  Stephen  in  Hours  in  a  Library,  should 
be  added  those  by  Frederic  Harrison,  Studies  in  Early  Victorian  Lit,  1895  , 
and  G.  Saintsbury,  Corrected  Impression*,  1895,  and  the  excellent  balanced 
lecture  by  Sir  R.  Jebb,  1900.  Edd.  of  the  works  of  Macaulay  are  numerous  : 
that  of  the  Essays  by  F.  C.  Montague,  3  vols.,  1903,  has  valuable  notes  and 
introductions.  C.  H.  Firth's  illustrated  ed.  of  the  Hixtfjry,  6  vols.,  1913-15, 
contains  no  commentary,  but  see  below  note  to  p.  126,  note  2. 


NOTES  415 

p.  110.  Carlyle  on  Macaulay.  I  do  not  cite  in  text  the  letter  of  July  24, 
1840,  the  most  vicious  of  all,  and  the  most  amusing  (M.  will  be  'a  poor  Holland 
House  unbeliever,  with  spectacles  instead  of  eyes,  to  the  end  of  him'),  because 
it  was  prompted  by  the  mistaken  belief  that  an  article  on  Carlyle  in  the  Edin- 
burgh, really  by  Herman  Merivale,  was  by  Macaulay.  (Froude,  C.'s  Life  in 
London,  ch.  vii.)  On  being  undeceived,  he  was  'heartily  glad  ' — 'of  Macaulay 
I  still  have  considerable  hopes.' 

p.  111.  Great  Minute.  The  essentials  are  quoted  by  Trevelyan,  ch.  vi.  ;  but 
the  whole  should  be  made  more  accessible,  and  is  given  by  W.  F.  B.  Laurie, 
Distinguished  Anglo- Indians,  second  series,  1888,  pp.  170-84  ;  see  pp.  167-9, 
184-5,  for  previous  publication. 

p.  112.  Mitchci.  See  the  whole  passage  (written  in  June  1848)  in  his  Jail 
Journal,  'authors  ed.'  [1876],  pp.  37-9. 

p.  114.  Macaulay  and  religion.  For  his  conviction  that  there  can  be  'no 
progress'  in  theological  inquiry,  see  not  only  the  essay  on  Ranke,  but  History, 
ch.  xvii.,  the  pages  on  George  Fox  :  '  In  theology,  the  interval  is  small  indeed 
between  Aristotle  and  a  child,  between  Archimedes  and  a  naked  savage'  (italics 
mine).  The  next  sentences  may  well  glance  at  the  secession  of  Newman  : 
'  inquisitive  and  restless  spirits  take  refuge  from  their  own  scepticism  in  the 
bosom  of  a  church  which  pretends  to  infallibility,  and,  after  questioning  the 
existence  of  a  Deity,  bring  themselves  to  worship  a  wafer'  (italics  mine).  This 
is  very  like  Mill's  phrase  in  the  Liberty  about  the  man  who  'spends  a  life  in 
sophisticating  with  an  intellect  which  he  cannot  silence.'  See,  too,  letter  of 
Nov.  13,  1840,  in  Life,  ch.  viii.,  where  Macaulay  says  that  he  has  'no  disposi- 
tion to  split  hairs  about'  the  Eucharist,  but  will  write,  preferably,  about 
'  Wycherley  and  the  other  good-for-nothing  fellows.'  Macaulay  was  very  much 
'at  peace'  about  the  mysteries  of  the  faith. 

p.  126,  note  1.  Acton.  See,  in  his  Correspondence  (1917),  vol.  i.,  p.  260,  the 
whole  letter  of  June  21,  1876,  to  Gladstone  on  Macaulay.  M.  '  is  dishonest  by 
display  :  of  the  Reformation  he  knew  almost  nothing,  yet  he  so  pillaged  Ranke 
as  to  make  believe  that  he  was  a  rival  authority  on  that  age.  Then  how 
materialistic  he  is,  his  imagination  especially,'  etc. 

p.  1 26,  note  2.  riddled.  See  art.  in  D.  N.  B.  by  Sir  L.  Stephen  for  list  of 
the  chief  criticisms  up  to  date.  They  include,  besides  those  named  in  my  text, 
John  Paget's  Neu-  Examen,  1861  (and  his  Puzzles  and  Paradoxes,  1874),  which 
deals  with  Marlborough,  Penn,  Claverhouse,  the  picture  of  the  Highlands,  and 
the  account  of  Glcncoe  ;  also  the  vindications  of  Penn  by  W.  Hepworth  Dixon 
in  his  Life  of  P.,  1851,  and  by  W.  E.  Forster,  Observations,  etc.,  1849.  (Mac- 
aulay added  notes  dealing  with  these  objections  in  his  ed.  of  1857.)  F.  C. 
Montague's  commentary  in  his  ed.  of  the  Essays  j;ives  much  matter  for  supple- 
menting and  judging  Macaulay,  e.g.,  in  the  case  of  Hastings.  C.  H.  Firth's 
paper  in  the  Scottish  Hist.  Rev.  for  July  1918  on  'M.'s  Treatment  of  Scottish 
History '  is  a  sample  of  the  treatment  required  by  the  whole  Hist,  of  England, 
and  is  'p.irt  of  a  series  of  lectures  delivered  at  Oxford'  on  that  work  ;  these 
unfortunately  are  as  yet  unpublished.  See  too,  on  Macaulay's  general  use  of 
evidence,  Sir  R.  Lodge  in  Chambers's  Cyclop,  of  Eng.  Lit,  1903,  iil  367-9  ;  I 
have  quoted  from  this  art.  in  my  text  the  phrase  about  '  extreme  precision,'  etc. 

p.  130.  rhythm.  See  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Eng.  Prose  Rhythm,  1912, 
pp.  370-5,  for  a  balanced  statement  ;  yet  I  would  rate  Macaulay  higher  on  this 


416  NOTES 

count,  and  do  not  nnd  him  so  monotonous.  Prof.  Saintsbury  notes  his  fond- 
ness for  trochaic  endings  of  the  clause  ;  equally  common  is  the  habit  of  ending 
with  a  bang  on  a  strong  accent,  often  a  monosyllable.  Yet,  within  the  clauses, 
the  usual  movement  is  smooth,  though  not  too  smooth,  and  is  in  what  I  have 
elsewhere  labelled  'rising'  and  'waved  rather  than  in  'falling'  or  'level' 
rhythm  (see  a  paper  on  'English  Prose  Numbers'  in  Essays  and  Studies  by 
Members  of  the  ling.  Association,  vol.  iv.,  1913).  formal  analysis  of  chosen 
passages  confirms  this  view,  Sometimes  a  much  freer  and  more  poetic  rhythm 
is  attained,  as  in  the  celebrated  '  purple  patch '  on  Milton  in  History,  ch.  iii. 
['  A  mightier  |  poet,  j  tried  |  at  once  |  by  pain,  j  danger,  |  pdverty,  |  obloquy,  | 
and  blindness,  j|  meditated,  ||  undisturbed  |  by  the  obscene  |  tumult  |  around 
him,'  :  etc.).  The  37  '  feet,'  or  accent-groups,  of  the  complete  sentence, 
contain  almost  every  type  of  'foot'  that  is  possible  in  English,  and  the  whole,  in 
spite  of  the  number  of  trochees  and  dactyls  which  it  might  be  feared  would 
check  the  flow,  is  wrought  into  an  impeccable  harmony. 

p.  133.  Froude.  H.  W.  Paul,  Life,  1905.  No  collected  ed.,  and  apparently 
no  bibliography  beyond  the  lists  in  D.  N.  B.,  Suppl.  i.  and  in  Camb.  Eng.  Lit., 
vols.  xiii.  and  xiv.  But  most  of  the  works,  after  the  earliest,  are  easy  to  reach, 
the  History,  the  Short  Studies,  Oceana,  and  the  various  Oxford  lectures,  being 
in  popular  form.  For  some  of  the  Froude-Carlyle  literature,  see  ante,  note  to 
p.  8. 

p.  137.  Euripides.  See,  in  ch.  xiv.,  sec.  x.  of  text,  on  Browning's  Balaustion 
and  the  revulsion  in  favour  of  Euripides  ;  whose  sceptical  and  satiric  side 
Froude  relishes,  and  three  of  whose  plays  he  analyses  with  his  graceful  skill. 

p.  140.  Froude  and  Freeman.  See  Paul,  Life,  ch.  v.,  for  a  summary  of  the 
disputes,  and  plea  that  Froude  on  the  whole  triumphed.  A.  Lang,  Hist,  of 
Eng.  Lit.,  1902,  pp.  651-3  (whence  my  quotation  in  text,  pp.  140-1),  remarks 
that  Freeman  'did  not  know  where  to  have  him,'  and  gives  other  examples  of 
inaccuracy.  For  the  consensus  of  historians  on  this  point,  and  for  an  excellent 
summary  of  Froude's  qualities  and  defects  as  historian,  see  G.  P.  Gooch,  Hist. 
and  Historians  in  the  Nineteenth  Cent.,  1913,  pp.  332-9. 

p.  145.  Thirlwall.  Letters,  Lit.  and  Theological,  ed.  J.  J.  S.  Perowne  and 
L.  Stokes,  2  vols.,  1881  (for  my  extract  on  Newman,  see  i.  260  ff.  ;  on  Morris, 
i.  292).  Letters  to  a  Friend,  ed.  A.  P.  Stanley,  1881.  Remains,  Lit.  and 
Theological,  ed.  Perowne,  3  vols.,  1877-80  (charges,  essays,  sermons).  The  Hist. 
of  Greece  remains  in  its  revised  ed.,  1845-52. 

p.  148.  Grote.  A  condensed  ed.,  containing  the  more  valuable  parts  of  the 
History,  with  notes  and  corrections  and  commentaries  up  to  date,  has  been 
made  by  J.  M.  Mitchell  and  M.  O.  B.  Caspari,  1907  ;  see  p.  xiii  on  Grote's 
English  predecessors  ;  and  the  editors'  lucid  account,  on  which  I  have  drawn, 
of  the  aspects  in  which  Grote's  work  is  and  is  not  antiquated.  For  a  contem- 
porary appreciation  and  criticism,  see  E.  A.  Freeman's  articles  on  The  Athenian 
Democracy,  1856,  and  Alexander  the  Great,  1857,  reprinted  in  his  Historical- 
Essays,  second  series,  1873.  On  Grote's  share  in  The  Influence  of  Natural 
Religion,  by  '  Philip  Beauchamp,'  see  ante,  note  to  p.  61  of  text. 

p.  149.  Finlay.  The  complete  work,  with  the  author's  last  corrections,  is 
The  History  of  Greece  from  the  Conquest  by  the  Romans  to  the  Present  Time, 
B.C.  146  to  A.D.  1864,  ed.  F.  H.  Tozer,  7  vols.,  1877  (see  the  striking  brief 
autobiography  given  in  vol.  i.,  and  Finlay's  reference  to  himself,  vii.  272,  n.\ 


NOTES  417 

The  prefaces  of  1843  and  1855  clearly  explain  Finlay's  scope  and  purpose.     See 
Tozer's  account  of  the  course,  and  intricate  bibliography,  of  the  book. 

p.  150.  eye-witness.  See  W.  Alison  Philips,  in  Camb.  Mod.  Hist.,  x. 
804,  for  ref.  to  the  MSS.  papers  of  Sir  Richard  Church  in  B.  M.,  and  Finlay's 
estimate  thereof  ;  and  p.  806  for  need  of  caution  in  reading  all  narratives  of  the 
event. 

p.  151,  note  1.  Christian  ethics  .  .  .  national  unity.     See  History,  i.  135  ff. 

p.  151,  note  2.  eschews  rhythm  and  the  graces.  A  sentence  like  this  is 
common  :  '  the  power  of  systematic  organ isation,  as  distinct  from  the  pedantry 
of  uniform  central  isation,  was  never  more  conspicuous  than  in  the  energy  of  the 
Othomau  administration'  (v.  11). 

p.  151,  note  3.  first  Byzantine  sovereigns,     iii.  9-10. 

p.  151,  note  4.  .  .  .  tribute  of  Christian  children.  History,  v.  3  ;  see  also 
for  the  cast  of  Finlay's  political  philosophy,  such  passages  as  i.  121  :  'It  is 
impossible  for  man  to  exist  in  society  without  some  religious  feeling,'  etc.  ; 
i.  191,  'there  is  nothing  in  the  range  of  human  affairs  so  completely  democratic 
as  taste  ;  Sophocles  addressed  himself  alike  to  the  educated  and  the  uneducated,5 
etc.  ;  v.  132,  'the  fermenting  leaven  of  self-destruction  which  exists  in  all 
corporate  bodies  placed  beyond  the  direct  control  of  public  opinion ' ;  v.  36, 
'  fortunately  it  is  the  nature  of  despotism  to  accelerate  the  corruption  even  of 
those  institutions  which  increase  its  power';  and  iii.  165  ;  v.  232  ;  vii.  318, 
'  The  best  despot,'  etc. 

p.  152,  note  1.  Thomas  Arnold.  A.  P.  Stanley,  Life  and  Corr.  of  T.  J., 
2  vols.,  1844  (bibliography  in  vol.  ii.),  many  edd.  Arnold's  works  are  not 
collected.  The  Misc.  Works,  1845,  were  edited  by  Stanley.  The  Thucydides 
and  the  Hist,  of  Home  live,  and  are  easy  to  find.  The  Second  Punic  War, 
ed.  W.  T.  Arnold,  1886,  consists  of  chaps,  xlii.-xlvii.  of  vol.  iii.  of  the  History, 
with  some  corrections  from  author's  MS.,  additional  notes,  and  valuable  preface 
by  the  editor,  as  well  as  bibliography  of  the  chief  fresh  authorities  up  to  date. 
William  Thomas  Arnold  (1852-1904),  himself  a  writer  of  mark  on  the  subject 
(Roman  System  of  Provincial  Administration,  1879,  etc.  ;  Studies  in  Roman 
Imperialism,  ed.  E.  Fiddes,  1906)  and  a  scholar-journalist  of  a  rare  type, 
working  on  the  Manchester  Guardian,  was  also  an  admirable  editor  of  Keats 
and  dramatic  critic.  His  father,  Thomas  Arnold,  junior,  the  younger  son  of  the 
head  master,  wrote  a  Manual  of  Eng.  Literature  (1862)  and  edited  the  English 
work3  of  Wiclif ;  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  the  novelist,  was  his  daughter.  Younger 
scions  still  of  this  race  have  the  gift  for  letters  ;  vital  lampada  tradunt  ;  but 
our  limiting  date  of  1880,  here  again,  has  to  be  remembered. 

p.  152,  note  2.  ethics  and  politics.  See  Arnold's  inaugural  lecture  at  Oxford, 
given  in  1841,  and  printed  in  his  Introductory  Lectures  on  Modern  History, 
1845  ;  where  an  appendix  deals  with  his  critics.  Arnold  clashes  with  Macau- 
lay's  Whig  proposition,  set  out  in  his  Edinburgh  review  (1839)  of  Gladstone  on 
Church  and  State,  that  the  chief  aim  of  the  state  is  '  the  security  of  the  persons 
and  property  of  men.'  Arnold  insists  on  the  larger  moral  and  spiritual  purpose, 
and  works  up  to  his  theory  of  the  '  perfect  state  and  the  perfect  church '  as  identi- 
cal.    See  the  lecture,  p.  10. 

p.  157.  Stubbs.     Letters,  ed.  W.  H.  'Hutton,  1904.     The  Seventeen  Lectures 
on  the  Study  of  Mediaeval  and  Modern    Hittory  (1886)  are  of  most  general 
interest ;  many  other  series  (On  European  History,  On  Early  Eng.  History,  etc.), 
VOL.  I.  2D 


418  NOTES 

were  collected  and  edited  after  Stubbs's  lifetime  by  A.  Hassa.ll,  who  also  reprinted 
^1902^  the  Introductions  in  the  Rolls  Series.  The  Select  darter*  have  also 
been  re-edited  by  H.  W.  C.  Davis  ;  for  a  summary  of  the  value  of  the  work,  in 
the  light  of  later  research,  see  Gooch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  342-5  ;  and  art.  in  D.  N.  B. 
(Suppl.  ii.)  by  T.  F.  Tout. 

p.  158.  philosophy  of  hiBtory.  See  Lectures  on  Early  Eng.  Hist.,  ed.  Hassall, 
1906,  pp.  194  If. 

p.  159,  note  1.  portraits.  See  Hist.  Introd.  (Rolls),  ed.  Hassall,  pp.  92  ff. 
(Henry  n.)  ;  pp.  316-19  (Richard  i.)  ;  pp.  439  ff.  (John)  ;  and  Lect.  on  Europ. 
Hist.,'ed.  Hassall,  pp.  132  ff.  (Charles  v.),  pp.  241  ff.  (Henry  iv.). 

p.  159,  note  2.  Freeman.  W.  R.  W.  Stephens,  Life  and  Letters,  2  vols., 
I  895  ;  an  excellent  memoir,  but  most  of  the  letters  are  of  professional  rather 
than  general  interest.  See  too  F.  York  Powell,  Occasional  Writings,  ed.  0. 
Elton,  1906,  ii.  27-37,  for  a  personal  sketch  and  estimate.  For  judgements  by 
other  historians,  see  Gooch,  History  and  Historians,  etc.,  1913,  pp.  346-52 
('The  Oxford  Historians');  and  Sir  A.  W.  Ward,  Camb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit, 
xiv.  69-74  (1916).  Also  an  informing  paper  by  Lord  Bryce,  Studies  in  Contemn. 
Biography,  1904,  pp.  262-92,  '  with  a  profound  and  minute  knowledge  of 
English  history  down  to  the  fourteenth  century,  so  far  as  his  aversion  to  the 
employment  of  manuscript  authorities  would  allow,  and  a  scarcely  inferior 
knowledge  of  foreign  European  history  during  the  same  period,  with  a  less  full 
but  very  sound  knowledge  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
with  a  thorough  mastery  of  pretty  nearly  all  ancient  history,  his  familiarity 
with  later  European  history,  and  with  the  history  of  such  outlying  regions  as 
India  and  America,  was  not  much  beyond  that  of  the  average  educated  man ' 
(p.  280).  Freeman's  works,  from  their  nature,  can  never  be  collected  ;  a  biblio- 
graphy (excluding  the  Sat.  Rev.  and  some  archaeological  articles)  is  given  in 
Stephens,  vol.  ii.  ad  fin.,  and  comprises  over  two  hundred  entries.  To  the 
works  named  in  my  text  may  be  added  the  masterly  General  Sketch  of  European 
History,  1872. 

p.  164.  Gardiner.  The  10  vols,  of  the  Hist,  of  England,  1603-1642,  were  first 
issued  together  in  1883-4  ;  I  cite  this  ed.  For  life  see  art.  by  C.  H.  Firth  in 
Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  Suppl.  ii.  The  quotation  from  York  Powell  is  from  his  Life, 
Letters,  etc.,  ii.  42,  43;  see  the  whole  article;  also  G.  P.  Gooch,  op.  cit., 
pp.  359-65.  The  remarks  of  Gardiner  on  the  statesman  and  the  historian  occur 
in  the  preface  to  his  tenth  vol. 

p.  166.  toleration.  See  too  viii.  165-6  ('the  main  condition  of  toleration  was 
the  absence  of  fear  lest  toleration  should  be  used  as  a  means  of  attack  upon 
those  who  granted  it '),  and  id.,  p.  176,  on  the  arguments  of  Vane  in  Massachu- 
setts. In  vol.  x.  (p.  12),  'the  traditional  belief  of  centuries,  held  alike  by  the 
zealot  and  the  politician,  was  that  religious  liberty  was  but  another  name  for 
anarchy  '  ;  and  (pp.  34-7)  the  same  text  recurs  with  increasing  emphasis  as  the 
civil  war  approaches. 

p.  168,  note  1.  Seeley.  See  the  admirable  memorial  sketch  prefixed  by  G.  W. 
Prothero  to  The  Growth  of  British  Policy,  2  vols.,  1895  ;  and,  for  estimates, 
Sir  A.  W.  Ward,  op.  cit.,  xiv.  90-3,  and  Gooch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  369-74.  Seeley's 
works  are  mostly  easy  of  access,  especially  the  histories  :  The  Expansion  of  Eng- 
land has  been  often  re-issued.  His  Introduction  to  Political  Science  (1896)  is  a 
reprint  of  lectures.     The  papers  on  'Liberal  Education  in  Universities'  (1867) 


NOTES  419 

and  on  'English  in  Schools'  (1868),  reprinted  in  Lectures  and  Essays  (1870), 
should  not  be  overlooked. 

p.  168,  note  2.  Ecce  Homo.  Among  many  criticisms,  see  an  acute  but 
unsympathetic  one  in  Benn,  Rationalism,  ii.  236-46. 

p.  172.  many  names.  Besides  Gooch,  op.  cit.,  and  Ward,  op.  cit.,  see,  for  a 
contemporary  mention,  Stubbs,  Seventeen  Lectures,  etc.  (1876),  p.  64  ft'.,  which 
names,  beside  the  work  of  Freeman  and  Gardiner,  that  of  J.  S.  Brewer  on 
Henry  vin.,  of  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers  on  the  history  of  agriculture  and  prices, 
and  the  Oxford  translation  of  Ranke  ;  and  then  (1884),  p.  433  ff.,  the  labours  of 
James  Gairdner  on  the  early  Tudors,  and  the  first  instalments  of  T.  Hodgkin:s 
Italy  and  her  Invaders  (1880,  etc.),  and  of  Creighton's  Hist,  of  the  Papacy  ;  also 
the  Norse  work  of  G.  Vigfiisson  and  F.  York  Powell  (Corp.  Poet.  Boreale,  1883). 
'  All  these  and  more  came  thronging,'  and  prove  the  unbroken  continuity 
of  historical  studies  ;  but  it  is  out  of  my  plan,  as  well  as  beyond  my  powers, 
to  deal  with  them.  I  have  also  omitted,  as  belonging  more  to  learning  than  to 
letters,  such  wrork  as  Lord  Stanhope's  sober  War  of  the.  Succession  in  Spain, 
1832,  and  Hist,  of  Eng.  from  the  Peace  of  Utrecht,  7  vols.,  1836-54  ;  Sir  Archi- 
bald Alison's  long  popular  History  of  Europe,  1789-1815,  10  vols.,  1833-42  ; 
John  Hill  Burton's  History  of  Scotland,  7  vols.,  1867-70,  and  Patrick  Fraser 
Ty tier's  earlier  Hist,  of  Scotland,  9  vols.,  1828-50;  and  the  writings  of  W. 
Nassau  Molesworth,  Sir  Spencer  Walpole,  and  others. 

p.  174.  Napier.  Life,  by  H.  A.  Bruce  [Lord  Aberdare],  2  vols.,  1864.  See  i. 
234  ff.  for  the  inception  of  the  History  ;  also  i.  536  ff.  ;  ii.  40,  telling  how  the 
account  of  Albuera  was  written  'during  a  rare  interval  of  health,  on  a  stormy 
day  of  March,  as  the  author  strode  along  the  upland  downs  in  Wiltshire, 
battling  with  an  equinoctial  gale '  ;  and  ii.  200,  a  splendid  outburst,  uttered 
when  Napier  was  ill  and  had  been  under  narcotics  :  '  What  am  I  now  ?  A 
bundle  of  pain  and  misery  :  and  what  will  be  the  next  step  ?  I  suppose  I  shall 
be  a  little — a  very  little — better  and  happier  than  I  am  now,  though  low  enough, 
I  expect.  Or  will  it  be  a  large  flat  dreary  plain  of  oblivion,  without  memory, 
without  hope,  without  knowledge,  without  desire  ?  Well ! — if  so,  I  shall  be 
out — that  is  all.  And  what  am  I  that  will  be  out  ?  Mere  pain.' — Napier 
also  published  English  Battles  and  Sieges  in  the  Peninsula,  consisting  of 
extracts  from  the  Histary,  some  of  them  compressed,  and  with  some  passages 
(including  the  Coruiia  fight  and  the  character  of  Moore)  'entirely  recomposed.' 

p.  176,  note  1.  Kinglake.  See  W.  Tuckwell,  A.  W.K.,  1902,  which  contains 
(pp.  22  ff.)  clues  to  many  allusions  in  Eothen,  and  also  new  information  as  to 
Kinglake's  friendship  with  Mme.  Novikoff,  pp.  90  ff.  The  'cabinet'  ed.  of 
the  Invasion  appeared  in  1887-8,  and  the  prefaces  to  some  of  the  vols,  are  new 
(e.g.  the  story  of  Nicholas  Kir^eft',  the  Russian  hero,  in  vol.  i.  ;  see  Tuckwell, 
pp.  90-1,  on  the  circumstances).  There  are  attacks  on  the  first  two  vols,  in 
both  Quart.  Rev.  and  Ed.  Rev.  for  April  1863,  the  former  the  more  lively  and 
violent  of  the  two.  In  defence,  Mr.  Kinglake  and.  the  Quarterlys,  'by  an  old 
reviewer,'  namely  Abraham  Hayward,  1863,  exposes  many  misinterpretations 
effectively.  There  is  an  abridgement  of  the  Invasion,  'adapted  for  military 
students,'  by  Sir  G.  S.  Clarke,  1899,  with  a  separate  atlas. 

p.  176,  note  2.  Quarterly.  These  articles  are  assigned  to  Kinglake  by  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen,  in  1).  N.  B. 

p.  179.  Oxford  Movement.     Authorship  most  voluminous;    see  bibliography 


420  NOTES 

by  S.  L.  Ollard  in  C.  E.  L.,  xii.  453-63,  where  there  are  40  'particular  authors' 
named  ;  with  much  of  this  matter  I  do  not  affect  to  cope.  The  corresponding 
chapter,  id.,  no.  xii.,  by  W.  H.  Hutton,  is  in  excellent  perspective,  and  I  am 
indebted  to  it.  The  fullest  history  is  one  written  from  a  conciliatory  Roman 
standpoint :  P.  Thureau-Dangin,  La  Renaissance  catholique  en  Angleterre,  three 
parts,  1899,  1903,  1906,  the  record  coming  down  to  1892  ;  tr.  W.  Wilberforce, 
2  vols.,  1915.  For  older  accounts  by  participants,  see  under  T.  Mozley,  F. 
Oakeley,  and  Sir  W.  Palmer  in  Ollard's  list.  See  my  textN  on  R.  W.  Church, 
The  Oxford  Movement  (1833-1845),  1891  (posthumous  ed.,  enhanced  from 
author's  MSS.,  1909).  For  a  critical  review  and  strictures,  see  the  Congre- 
gationalist  divine  A.  M.  Fairbairn's  Catholicism,  Roman  and  Anglican,  ed.  3, 
1899  (reprinted  articles,  including  his  dispute  with  Newman).  For  a  fair  and 
learned  summary  of  the  views  of  theologians  from  Paley  to  Martineau  see  John 
Hunt,  Religious  Thought  in  England  in  the  XlXth  Century,  1896.  J.  H. 
Overton,  The  Eng.  .Church  in  the  XlXth  Century,  1800- 1S3S,  1894,  chap,  vi., 
registers  the  chief  theological  works  of  that  period. 

p.  181.  Hurrell  Froudo.  H.  F.,  Memoranda  and  Comments,  1904,  by  Miss 
L.  I.  Guiney,  contains  a  reprint  (with  some  conjectural  editing)  of  his  letters, 
and  also  a  full  catena  of  extracts  from  the  His:h  Church  literature  concerning 
his  life  and  character.  Froude  left  his  mark  on  those  about  him  in  a  measure 
which  nothing  from  his  pen  can  now  explain — least  of  all  the  painful  and  trivial 
tone  of  self-scrutiny,  as  of  an  ascetical  minor  Rousseau,  which  marks  the 
Remains. 

p.  182.  Newman.  Lists  of  works  :  in  C.  E.  L.,  xii.  459-61  (S.  L.  Ollard,  chief 
works  only) ;  in  D.  N.  B.,  by  W.  S.  Lilly  (not  exhaustive) ;  and  Newman's  own, 
in  1865  and  later  edd.  of  Apologia  (up  to  1864).  Works,  uniform  (not  complete) 
ed.,  36  vols.,  1868-81.  Characteristics  from  Writings,  ed.  Lilly,  1874.  Bio- 
graphy :  the  Apologia  ;  Letters  and  Corresp.  .  .  in  the  Eng.  Church,  ed.  Anne 
Mozley,  2  vols.,  1891,  including  'autobiographical  memoir'  down  to  1832  ;  Lift, 
by  Wilfrid  Ward,  2  vols.,  1912  (full,  and  fair,  and  much  new  matter) ;  Thureau- 
Dangin,  N.  Catholique,  etc.,  1912.  Shorter  sketches  by  R.  H.  Hutton,  1891  ; 
Canon  W.  F.  Barry,  1904  ;  and  H.  Bremond,  1905  and  1906.  The  Lives  and 
Memoirs  of  Manning,  Pattison,  Pusey,  W.  G.  Ward,  and  Wiseman  furnish 
varied  material.  Hostile  judgements  and  criticisms  are  exemplified  in  F.  W. 
Newman's  Contributions  to  the  Early  Life  of  Card.  Neioman,  1891  ;  in  Sir  L. 
Stephen,  N.'s  Theory  of  Belief,  reprinted  in  An  Agnostic's  Apology,  etc.  ;  and 
in  E.  A.  Abbott,  Philomythus,  1891  (on  miracles),  and  The  Anglican  Career  of 
Card.  N.j  2  vols.,  1892.  This  last  is  a  bitter,  captious  book  for  the  prosecution, 
with  elaborate  references  at  every  point,  mingled  with  shrewd  but  seemingly 
unwilling  passages  of  appreciation,  and  not  questioning  Newman's  personal 
honesty,  but  making  him  out,  on  the  whole,  a  sophist,  rhetorician,  and  self- 
deceiver.    The  detail  is  more  copious  than  convincing. 

p.  186.  Essay  on  Development.  See,  for  special  aspects  of  the  argument  (I 
quote  ed.  2,  1846),  pp.  7-24,  where  the  rival  (supposedly  Anglican)  canon  of 
Christian  truth,  quod  semper,  quod  %ibique,  quod  ab  omnibus,  is  found  wanting  ; 
the  interesting  but  confused  recital,  pp.  44  ff.,  of  the  various  species  of  'develop- 
ment' ('material,"  physical,"  political,'  etc.) ;  the  definition,  somewhat  question- 
begging,  of  the  '  corruption '  of  an  idea  as  that  which  '  obscures '  its  essence,  and 
'disturbs'  or  'reverses'  its  growth;  p.  181,  on  antecedent  probability;  pp. 


NOTES  421 

320  ff.,  the  defence  of  the  interpretation  of  Scripture  in  its  '  mystical  sense,'  as 
'her  [the  Church's]  most  subtle  and  powerful  method  of  proof — a  method  of 
which  Newman  does  not  trace  the  '  corruptions.'  For  a  criticism  from  the 
learned  Anglican  point  of  view,  see  J.  B.  Mozley,  The  Theory  of  Development, 
1847  ;  and,  from  the  agnostic  side,  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  op.  cit.  in  last  note. 

p.  190.  Idea  of  a  University.  For  the  whole  episode  see  Ward,  Life,  i.  305- 
416.  Newman's  comment  on  the  want  of  'sagacity'  of  Pius  ix.  in  his  Irish 
policy  is  a  model  of  the  furious-icy-deferential  style  (p.  388).  The  first  nine 
lectures  were  prior  to  the  actual  foundation  ;  they  were  called  On  th*  Scope  and 
Nature  of  University  Education.  The  true  'inaugural'  was  given  on  Nov.  3, 
1854,  on  Christianity  and  Letters. 

p.  192.  Pattison.  Memoirs,  1885,  p.  210.  The  'grand  development,'  he 
says,  was  'sealed  to  Newman,'  who  could  not  read  German.  'A.  P.  Stanley 
once  said  to  me,  "  How  different  the  fortunes  of  the  Church  of  England  might 
have  been  if  Newman  had  been  able  to  read  German." '  Archdeacon  Hutton 
(Camb.  Eng.  Lit.  xii.  254)  ascribes  this  remark  to  J.  A.  Froude. 

p.  193,  note  1.  Kingsley.  I  will  quote  here  Charles  Bonnier,  Monographic 
die  Mensonge,  Essai  sur  la  Casuistique,  Liverpool,  1913,  privately  printed,  p. 
17:  'Que  fut-il  arrive  pourtant  si  Newman  avait  rencontre  un  Bayle  sur  sa 
route  ?  On  pourrait  se  figurer  le  grand  ironiste  .  .  .  couvrant  N.  d'eloges  et 
K.  de  condoleances  ;  appr^ciant  les  coups  et  les  parades,  criant  a  l'un  "  bien 
touche"  !  "  a  l'autre  "  Maladroit !  "  Puis,  a  la  fin  de  son  article,  dans  une  petite 
note  (Bayle  a  la  note  terrible)  il  eut  fait  doucement  remarquer  au  lecteur  que 
les  deux  pugillistes  s'etaient  battus  en  Pair  et  n'avaient  pas  aborde  une  fois  le 
point  dangereux  ;  de  la  sortirait  une  requisitoire,  avec  preuves  a  l'appui,  contre 
la  religion  chrdtienne.  II  renverrait  enfin  les  deux  plaideurs  dos-a-dos  et 
condamnerait  aux  depeus  l'Eglise — protestante  aussi  bien  que  catholique.'  The 
whole  passage,  pp.  14-17,  on  Newman,  Kingsley,  Gladstone,  and  Manning,  is 
instructive :  '  Ce  fut  une  veritable  "  danse  du  scalp "  intellectuelle '  (of  the 
Apologia).  See,  too,  W.  R.  Inge,  Outspoken  Essays,  cited  below  in  note  to 
p.  197. 

p.  193,  note  2.  Apologia.  See  the  ed.  by  Wilfrid  Ward,  1913,  which  gives 
full  apparatus  criticus  for  comparison  of  edd.  ;  the  changes  were  made  in  the 
second,  of  1865,  after  which  the  title  Apologia,  etc.,  was  restored,  though  the 
omitted  chapters  on  Kingsley  were  not. 

p.  193,  note  3.  letter.  Ward,  Life,  ii.  46.  The  remark  on  the  need  to  'say 
something  sharp '  is  in  this  letter. 

p.  196.  'My  surmise.'  Id.,  ii.  90  (and  cp.  ii.  491-2)  ;  the  reference  is  to  Sir 
Frederic  Rogers,  afterwards  Lord  Blachfurd,  whose  Letters,  ed.  G.  E.  Marindin, 
1896,  are  full  of  interesting  allusions  to  Newman  (pp.  246-7,  'thrown  away  by 
the  communion  to  which  he  has  devoted  himself  (1863) ;  and  p.  407,  'discus- 
sion in  1881  on  lines  familiar  from  Grammar  of  Assent — 'instinct,'  according  to 
N.,  '  often  a  truer  guide  than  what  is  logically  cogent,'  etc. 

p.  197.  sophist.  I  have,  of  course,  asserted  this  in  the  text  rather  than 
argued  it ;  but  may  refer  to  the  handling  of  Newman  in  Abbott's  Philomythus 
and  by  Sir  L  Stephen,  op.  cit.  I  think  that  his  powers  as  a  reasoner  and 
writer  are  at  their  flimsiest,  and  that  he  verges  on  the  grotesque,  in  his  dealing 
with  the  miraculous  ;  and  this  is  not  because,  as  it  happens,  I  disagree  with 
him ;  for  I  should  never  use  such  terms  of  Mozley's  Bampton  Lectures  on  the 


422  NOTES 

same  subject.  See,  for  an  admirable  analysis,  the  article  on  Newman  in  W.  R. 
Inge,  Outspoken  Essays,  1919,  pp.  172-204.  Dean  Inge  brings  out  the  intel- 
lectual isolation  of  Newman  in  the  Roman  Church,  and  treats  his  '  personalism  ' 
(in  contrast  with  the  scholastic  rationalism)  as  forecasting,  and  in  some  sense 
affecting,  the  phenomenon  of  'Modernism'  (I  have  borrowed  one  or  two  points 
in  my  text  from  this  exposition). 

p.  202.  Faber.  For  the  secular  Poems,  see  Faber's  own  selection,  1856  ;  the 
Life  and  Letters,  ed.  J.  E.  Bowden,  1869,  contain  ftorid  descriptions  of  travel  in 
Greece,  Turkey  and  Italy,  and  also  some  explosions  of  fanaticism  :  Protestant- 
ism is  '  the  devil's  masterpiece,'  and  even  the  English  Bible,  though  it  '  lives  on 
in  the  ear  like  a  music  that  can  never  be  forgotten,'  is  still  'an  unhallowed 
power.'  Hymns,  first  ed.,  1848  ;  collected,  1871.  Works  (prose  and  verse), 
11  vols.,  1914. 

p.  203,  note  1.  Trench.  Poems,  new  ed.,  two  vols.,  1885  ;  among  the  earliest 
were  Sabbat  ion,  Honor  Neale,  etc,  1838  ;  and  Poems  from  Eastern  Sources, 
1842.  Trench  has  no  very  definite  note  of  his  own,  but  throws  a  wide  net  for 
his  topics,  drawing  on  Arabian,  Persian,  Spanish,  and  Italian  themes  ;  trans- 
lates Goethe,  and  echoes  Tennyson  as  well  as  Wordsworth. 

p.  203,  note  2.  Neale.  Collected  Poems,  Sequences,  and  Carols,  1914.  The 
Mediaeval  Hymns  and  Sequences  appeared  in  1851. 

p.  204.  W.  G.  Ward.  Full  narrative  of  his  career  by  his  son  Wilfrid  Ward, 
in  W.  G.  W.  and  the  Oxford  Movement,  1889,  and  in  W.  G.  W.  and  the  Catholic 
Revival,  1893.  These  volumes  (like  the  same  writer's  Lift}  of  Newman),  are 
prolix,  but  equitable  in  tone,  and  contribute  much  to  the  history  both  of  the 
Anglican  and  the  Roman  movements,  from  the  Roman  standpoint.  They  are 
also  full  of  vivid  traits  and  stories  of  W.  G.  Ward.  The  Philosophy  of  Tlieism, 
2  vols.,  1884,  is  edited  by  the  same  hand  ;  the  essays  are  reprinted  from  the 
Dublin  Review.  See,  in  particular,  i.  185  ff.,  'Mr.  Mill's  Philosophical  Posi- 
tion' (1874);  'Science,  Prayer,  Freewill,  and  Miracle,'  ii.  158  ft'.  (1867);  and 
ii.  244  ff.  (1871),  'Certitude  in  Religious  Assent.' 

p.  206,  note  1.  J.  B.  Mozley.  Ligt  of  books  and  articles  in  Essays  Histori- 
cal and  Theological,  2  vols.,  1875,  vol.  ii.  ad  fin.  I  have  seen  the  reprinted 
articles  (many  from  Christian  Remembrancer)  and  some  others,  but  not  all ; 
the  Oxford  sermons  (Barnpton  and  others) ;  the  Lectures  and  other  Theological 
Papers,  1883,  which  contain  some  of  Moziey's  close  reasoning  on  original  sin, 
the  Eucharist,  the  Athanasian  Creed  (in  which  he  defends  the  damnatory  clauses 
with  conditions),  and  other  fundamentals.  See,  for  an  humorous  and  appre- 
ciative picture  of  the  man,  H.  Scott  Holland,  A  Bundle  of  Memories  [1915], 
pp.  33-47  ;  where  the  stages  and  divisions  of  Moziey's  writing  are  indicated. 
Also  Letters,  edited  by  his  sister  Anne  Mozley,  1885,  especially  for  many  reft', 
to  Newman  ;  and,  for  a  hostile  and  blankly  unintelligent  view,  Purcell,  Life  of 
Card.  Manning,  1896,  ii.  680-1  (the  Cardinal's  words  on  reading  J.  B.  M.'s 
comments  on  himself  in  the  said  Letters). 

p.  206,  note  2.  Church.  Life  and  Letters,  ed.  Mary  C.  Church,  1895,  with 
list  of  works,  pp.  351-2.  D.  C.  Lathbury,  Dean  Chtfrch,  1905.  Spenser  and 
Bacon  in  Eng.  Men,  of  Letters,  and  in  Misc.  Works,  5  vols.,  the  others  being 
Dante  and  other  Essays,  St.  Aaselm,  and  Misc.  Essays.  Church's  descriptions 
in  his  letters  of  Italy  and  other  countries  where  he  travelled  are  of  interest  ; 
also  Canon  Scott  Holland's  account  of  the  man  and  his  work  as  Dean,  Life,  pp. 


NOTES  423 

205-35.     Church's  paper  on  Sordello  (1887),  and  reprinted  with  Dante,  should 
be  named. 

p.  208,  note  1.  'noetics.'  On  Whately,  see  my  Survey  (1912),  ii.  393-4  ;  he 
belongs  to  both  periods,  and  has  had  to  be  bisected.  Edward  Copleston  of 
Oriel  (1776-1849),  later  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  is  often  pointed  to  as  the  inspirer  of 
Whately  and  the  'noetics';  but  he  hardly  figures  in  letters,  save  for  such 
writing  as  that  named  in  Surety  (1912),  i.  393. 

p.  208,  note  2.  broad  churchmen.  See  the  article  (1856),  by  F.  D.  Maurice, 
prefacing  the  reprint  (I  quote  third  ed.,  1874,  introd.  by  E.  H.  Plumptre)  of 
J.  C.  Hare's  Victory  of  Faith  ;  Maurice  here  disoAvns  and  disproves  the  appel- 
lation of  a  'party'  as  applied  to  the  Broad  Church  ;  they  did  not  try,  he  says, 
to  found  an  'Anglo-German  school.'  For  a  pungent  adverse  analysis  of  the 
tenets  of  Hare,  Maurice,  and  Jowett,  from  the  evangelical  standpoint,  see  J.  H. 
Rigg,  Modern  Anglican  Theology,  1857  (the  1880  ed.  also  contains  a  memoir  of 
C.  Kingsley).  The  phrase  'broad  church'  is  said  (see,  too,  Sir  L.  Stephen,  s.u. 
'  Maurice'  in  D.N.B.)  to  derive  from  a  sentence  in  an  article  of  Stanley's  in 
Ed.  Rev.,  1850,  on  the  Gorham  dispute:  the  English  Church  being  'by  the 
very  condition  of  its  being,  not  High  nor  Low,  but  Broad ' ;  for  this  ref.  see  J. 
Tulloch,  Movements  of  Religious  Thought  in  Britain,  during  the,  XIX th  Century, 
1885,  j).  260  ff.  This  book  is  an  unprejudiced  historical  sketch  of  the  whole 
subject  Its  accounts  of  J.  C.  Hare,  Erskine  of  Linlathen,  Carlyle,  and  Maurice, 
on  their  theological  side,  are  admirable.  See,  too,  the  ch.  by  F.  E.  Hutchinson 
in  Camb.  Hist,  of  Eng.  Lit.,  xii.  270-99,  on  the  'Growth  of  liberal  theology  :  : 
an  interesting  account,  from  which  T  borrow  the  translation  '  noetics  = 
'  intellectuals.' 

p.  210.  Essays  and  Reviews.  For  full  account  of  this  work  and  its  historic 
importance  (also  of  Colenso's  ideas)  see  Bonn,  Rationalism,  ch.  xiiL,  'The  Deli- 
verance of  Criticism  ' ;  to  him  I  am  indebted  for  the  'epigram'  quoted  in  text. 
Benn  well  vindicates  the  historic  importance  of  the  volume.  An  account  of  the 
sandstorm  which  it  raised  may  be  read  in  the  lift  of  Juwett  (see  next  note), 
ch.  x. 

p.  211.  Jowett.  E.  Abbott  and  L.  Campbell,  Life  and  Letters  of  B.  J., 
2  vols.,  1897. 

p.  212,  note  1.  literary  judgements.  See  on  Carlyle,  Life,  i.  417  (1866),  a 
pendant  to  Carlyle's  note  on  Jowett  as  'a  good-humoured  little  owlet  of  a  man,' 
etc.  ;  and  on  Browning,  ii.  355  ('  nowhere  is  he  really  affected  by  the  great 
themes  of  poets,  love,  or  ambition,  or  enthusiasm' — italics  mine);  there  is, 
however,  a  high  appreciation  of  Easter  Day. 

p.  212,  note  2.  memorandum.  Life,  ii.  310-14.  See  the  whole  passage, 
which  I  think  gives  Jowett's  ideas  and  aspirations  at  their  best  and  deepest. 

p.  213.  Stanley.  See  R.  E.  Prothero  and  G.  G.  Bradley,  Life  and  Con:  of 
A.  P.  S.,  3  vols.,  1893  ;  this  contains  bibliography  ;  also  G.  G.  Bradley,  Recol- 
lections  of  Stanley,  1883. 

p.  214.  Pattison.  The  Essays  were  collected  by  Henry  Nettleship,  2  vols., 
1889  ;  they  are  a  selection  from  Pattison's  writings  in  periodicals,  and  also 
contain  the  fragment  on  Scaliger  from  MS.  A  volume  of  Sermons  (1885) 
should  be  named.  I  recall  his  a^ed  figure,  about  1881,  silently  and  sternly 
presiding  over  a  meeting  of  the  Oxford  Browning  Society  ;  the  topic  of  the 
evening  was  that  poet's  conception  of  Love. 


424  NOTES 

p,  218.  Ruskin.  The  great  ed.  of  the  Works,  by  Sir  E.  T.  Cook  and  A. 
"Wedderburn,  39  vols.,  1903-12,  includes  correspondence,  bibliographies,  colla- 
tion of  text,  extracts  from  MSS.,  much  material  before  unprinted  or  unreprinted, 
a  monumental  index,  over  a  thousand  illustrations,  and  a  running  biographical 
commentary  :  the  latter  being  the  foundation  of  Cook's  Life  of  J.  R.,  2  vols., 
1911  (see.  too,  his  Studies  in  R,,  1890).  W.  G.  Collingwood's  Life  and  Work 
of  J.  R.,  1903,  is  also  to  be  consulted.  Most  of  Ruskin's  works  are  easily 
accessible  in  various  edd.  The  best  of  the  many  compact  studies  are  those  by 
Mrs.  Meynell,  1900,  and  by  Frederic  Harrison  ('Eng.  Men  of  Letters,'  1902  ; 
to  which  add  his  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  etc.,  1899).  But  some  of  the  best  exposi- 
tion is  in  French  :  J.  Milsand,  L'esthetique  anglaise,  1864  ;  R.  D.  la  Sizeranne, 
jR.  et  la  religion  de  la  beante,  1897,  E.  tr.  1900  ;  and  notably  J.  Bardoux,  Le 
mouvement  ideal  iste  et  social  dans  la  litt.  anglaise  an  XIXC  siecle :  John  Ruskin 
[1900].  On  the  artistic  side,  see  (Sir)  C.  Waldstein  [Walston],  The  Work  of  R., 
1894  ;  and  on  the  economic  and  political  side,  J.  A.  Hobson,  J.  R.,  Social 
Reformer,  1898,  a  lucid  vindication.  Many  personal  reff.  in  the  Carlyle  and 
Rossetti  literature.  The  familiar  Selections,  in  two  series  (various  dates)  were 
not  made  by  Ruskin,  who  was  a  '  tacitly  consenting '  party  ;  they  are,  on 
their  scale,  excellent;  but,  as  a  collection  of  'beauties,'  they  give  an  over- 
gorgeous  air  to  Ruskin's  average  style. 

p.  219.  Claude,  etc.  For  revisions  see  Works,  vol.  iii.  (the  standard  ed.  is 
always  cited  infra).  I  must  be  content  to  refer  generally  to  its  Index,  vol. 
xxxix.  Without  this  aid  the  student  of  Ruskin's  ideas  and  their  development, 
and  of  his  'contradictions,'  is  in  a  maze  ;  with  it  he  has  all  available  clues,  care- 
fully unravelled.  See,  then,  under  'Claude,'  'Raphael,'  etc.,  in  the  Index.  I 
cannot  possibly  give  all  references,  even  to  this  Index,  still  less  to  particular 
passages,  but  have  used  it  freely  ;  and  if  any  point  of  mine  calls  for  correction, 
the  Index  will  help  to  convict  me.  It  will  also  enable  these  notes  to  be 
fewer. 

p.  221.  eyes.  See,  in  Recreations  and  Reflections,  1902  ('middles'  from 
Sat.  Review  by  various  hands),  '  Ruskin,'  by  D.  S.  MacColl,  pp.  57-70  :  '  He  is 
a  man  subject  to  a  rapt  vision  of  delicate  things  such  as  the  fibres  of  moss,  the 
sculpturing  and  veiniug  of  rocks,  the  tracery  of  leaves,  the  lacework  of  foam, 
the  changing  fires  of  gems  and  clouds,  vision  compact  of  minute,  tender, 
treasuring  observation  and  of  religious  awe '  (p.  61). 

p.  222,  note  1.  theory  of  Beauty.  See  B.  Bosanquet,  Hist,  of  ^Esthetic, 
1892,  pp.  447-54  :  'he,  like  Winckelmann,  has  given  the  mind  a  new  organ  for 
the  appreciation  of  beauty.'  •  The  same  critic,  I  venture  to  think,  makes  rather 
light  of  the  '  popular  criticism'  that  Ruskin  '  turns  aesthetic  into  ethic' 

p.  222,  note  2.  bibliography  (1843-60).  For  the  connexion  of  Modem 
Painters  with  Ruskin's  other  works  of  this  period,  and  for  a  clear  account  of  its 
real  divisions  (as  distinct  from  volumes)  and  their  relationship,  see  Cook,  Life, 
vol.  i. 

p.  232.  style.  For  material  here  see  Works,  Index,  p.  491,  s.v.  'Ruskin.' 
My  quotations  from  Ruskin's  own  remarks  about  his  style  will  easily  be  traced 
there. 

p.  233,  note  1.  Ruskin's  English.  On  this  see  Cook,  Life  ;  and  the  same 
writer's  Literary  Recreations,  1918,  pp.  34-54,  an  admirable  summary  ;  also 
Frederic  Harrison,  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill,  etc.,  1899,  pp.  51-76,  'Ruskin  as 


NOTES  425 

master  of  prose '  (containing  an  interesting  note  on  his  use  of  '  musical 
consonance,'  or  echoed  sound).  On  cadence,  see  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  English 
Prose  Rhythm,  pp.  392-400. 

p.  233,  note  2.  Authorised  Version.  H.  J.  Brunhes,  Ruskin  et  la  Bible, 
Paris,  1901,  gives  some  details  of  interest,  especially  as  to  the  influence  of  the 
Prophets  and  the  Gospels  upon  Ruskin's  vision,  first  of  nature  and  her  meaning, 
and  then  of  man  and  his  destiny. 

p.  237.  Adria.  Of  course  this  ending  itself  can  be  read  into  a  blank  line  ; 
but  it  should  not  be,  for  the  natural,  prose  cadence  overpowers  the  sense  of 
inetre. 

p.  239.  social  welfare.  On  this  whole  matter  consult  J.  A.  Hobson,  Raskin, 
Social  Reformer,  1898  :  a  close  study,  at  most  points  sympathetic,  of  Ruskin's 
economic  and  social  gospel ;  also  the  relevant  chapters  in  Bardoux,  Le  mouve- 
ment  idealist e,  etc.,  1900. 

p.  242.  Munera  Pulveris.  For  a  full  dissection  of  the  book,  with  reft',  to 
many  passages  elsewhere  in  illustration,  see  editor's  preface  in  Works,  vol.  xvii. 

p.  245.  wailing  voice.  Dr.  John  Sampson  reminds  me  that  this  trait  is 
noticed  by  W.  H.  Mallock,  The  New  Republic,  2  vols.,  1877,  where  Ruskin 
figures  as  'Mr.  Herbert.'  The  book  is  worth  looking  at,  for  it  contains  not  only 
parody  of  style,  but  satire  on  ideas. 

p.  247.  Fors  Clavisera.  See  the  sifting-out  of  its  contents  in  editor's  preface 
to  vol.  xxvii.  of  Works  ;  which  brings  out  (inter  alia)  the  amount  of  space 
devoted  to  '  readings '  in  Scott,  Montaigne,  and  other  writers.  See  also 
remarks  of  F.  Harrison,  J.  R.,  pp.  179-96  :  'its  wonderful  quality  lies  in  tie 
utterly  unexpected  and  incalculable  sequence  of  ideas,'  etc. 

p.  249,  note  1.  criticism.  For  the  subject  of  this  and  the  next  chapter  see 
above  all  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Criticism,  iii.  472-560. 

p.  249,  note  2.  Keble.  Lectures  on  Poetry,  1832-1841,  tr.  by  E.  K.  Francis, 
2  vols.,  1912.  See  too  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Criticism,  iii.  (1904),  621-5  (App.  i.) ; 
I  knoAv  of  no  other  satisfactory  account. 

p.  252.  Brimley.  Essays  by  the  late  G.  B.,  ed.  W.  G.  Clark,  1858,  with  brief 
prefatory  note.  Except  for  the  'Tennyson,'  'which  appeared  in  the  Cambridge 
Essays  for  1855,' all  Brimley's  work  was  unsigned,  and  came  out  in  the  Spectator 
or  Fraser's.  The  short  paper  on  '  Comte's  Positive  Philosophy '  is  mostly  in  an 
orthodox  strain.  That  on  Lytton's  My  Novel  is  a  good  specimen  of  a  polite 
and  pulverising  review. 

p.  254.  Matthew  Arnold.  Works,  15  vols.,  1903-4,  have  a  full  bibliography 
(xv.  343-99)  by  T.  B.  Smart,  which  shows  what  is  and  is  not  contained  in  them  ; 
also  synoptical  index  to  poems.  Vols.  xiiL-xv.  are  the  Letters,  1848-1888,  ed. 
G.  W.  E.  Russell,  1898,  2  vols.  Collected  Poetical  Works,  one  vol.,  1890,  etc. 
The  Poems  of  M.  A.,  1840-1867,  ed.  Sir  A.  Quiller-Couch  (1909),  do  not 
contain  the  few  later  pieces,  but  give  the  rest  in  order  of  date  and 
with  textual  variants,  also  the  piel'aces  to  Poems  of  1853  and  1854,  and  to 
Meropc  (see  too  the  same  author's  essay  in  Studies  in  Literature,  1918, 
pp.  231-45).  Most  of  prose  works  in  popular  reprints  (sometimes  abridged  by 
author,  e.g.  God  and  the  Bible,  1884)  and  various  other  edd.  The  Reports  on 
Elementary  Schools,  1852-1882,  ed.  Sir  F.  Sandford,  1869,  and  re-ed.  F.  S. 
Marvin,  1908,  are  not  in  any  collection  of  the  Works.  Notebooks  of  M.  A., 
ed.  Hon.  Mrs,  Wodehouse,  1902.     Volumes  entitled  M.  A.,  mostly  brief,  by 


426  NOTES 

G.  Sai  ntsbury,  1899,  Herbert  Paul,  1902,  and  G.  W.  E.  Russell,  1904.  For  other 
criticism,  see  the  pages  by  E.  Dowden  in  Chambers's  Cyclop,  of  Eny.  Lit., 
iii.  591-600  ;  Swinburne,  Essays  and  Studies. 

p.  255.  Carlyle,  etc.  Letters,  March  25,  1881  :  <I  never  much  liked  Carlyle. 
He  seemed  to  me  to  be  "carrying  coals  to  Newcastle,"  as  our  proverb  says  ; 
preaching  earnestness  to  a  nation  which  had  plenty  of  it  by  nature,  but  was  less 
abundantly  supplied  with  several  other  useful  things';  but  see,  for  amends, 
the  lecture  on  Emerson.  As  to  Shelley,  see  p.  273  in  my  text.  Charlotte 
Bronte,  despite  what  is  said  in  Haworth  Churchyard,  is  hardly  treated  in 
Letters,  April  14,  1853:  'Why  is  Villette  disagreeable?  Because  the  writer's 
mind  contains  nothing  but  hunger,  rebellion,  and  rage,  and  therefore  that  is  all 
she  can  in  fact  put  into  her  book.'  As  to  Tennyson,  Enoch  Arden  is  oddly 
preferred  to  Tithonus  ;  see  Letters,  Sept.  22,  1864  :  '  I  do  not  think  T.  a  great 
and  powerful  spirit  in  any  line  as  Goethe  was  in  the  line  of  modern  thought, 
Wordsworth  in  that  of  contemplation,  Byron,  even,  in  that  of  passion.' 

p.  259.  Empedocles.  Arnold  makes  little  use  of  the  famed  conception  of 
Love  and  Strife  ;  but  one  of  the  passages  where  he  comes  nearest  to  the  'grand 
style '  is  suggested  by  the  lines  :— '  There  is  an  ordinance  of  Necessity,  a  time- 
honoured  decree  of  the  Gods,  eternal  and  sealed  fast  by  broad  oaths,  that 
whenever  any  of  the  diemons  whose  portion  is  length  of  days  have  by  sinning 
defiled  their  hands  with  bloodshed,  or  in  compliance  with  Strife  have  committed 
the  sin  of  false  witness,  they  must  wander  for  thrice  ten  thousand  seasons  away 
from  the  blessed,  being  born  throughout  the  time  in  all  manner  of  mortal  shapes, 
as  they  pass  in  succession  over  the  grievous  pathways  of  life.  For  the  might  of 
the  air  drives  them  to  the  ocean,  and  the  sea  vomits  them  out  on  the  soil  of  the 
earth,  and  the  earth  again  into  the  beams  of  the  tireless  sun,  and  he  flings  them 
into  the  eddies  of  the  air.  So  each  one  in  turn  receives  them,  but  they  loathe 
them  all  alike.  Of  such  dcemons  I,  too,  am  one,  an  exile  and  a  wanderer  by 
God's  will,  obedient  to  the  frenzy  of  Strife  :  (H.  Diels,  Fragmente  der  Vorso- 
hatiker,  ed.  3,  i.  267.  For  this  reference,  and  for  essential  parts  of  the  above 
translation,  I  am  indebted  to  my  colleague  Professor  A.  C.  Pearson). 
p.  261.  Rug-by  Chapel,  etc.  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Eng.  Prosody,  iii.  257. 
p.  264.  Cnurch  of  Brou.  See  Sir  E.  T.  Cook,  Literary  Recreations,  1918, 
pp.  294-6,  on  Arnold's  attempt  to  correct  the  poem.  He  first  separated  (1877) 
the  first  two  parts  and  called  them  A  Tomb  Antony  the  Mountains  •  but  after- 
wards repented,  and  put  them  back  again. 

p.  266.  Worsley.  He  says  too  modestly  that  '  it  is  those  who  have  little  or 
no  Greek  that  I  desire  to  interest,'  and  compromises  sensibly  in  the  spelling  of 
the  names.  His  book  seems  now  little  known,  but  ought  to  be  reprinted. 
Worsley's  Poems  and  Translation.-;  1863,  contain  some  neat  turnings  from 
Horace,  and  some  more  vivid  ones  from  the  Latin  hymnodists  :  the  original 
poems  are  often  over-Tennysonian  in  style. 

p.  272.  George  Sand.  The  familiar  paper  on  her  occurs  in  Mixed  Essays 
(originally  in  Fort.  Rev.,  June  1877)  ;  but  the  brief  one  here  referred  to  is  only 
reprinted  in  Works,  iv.  245-9  (originally  in  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  Aug.  12,  1884). 

p.  273.  Sainte-Beuve.  From  the  article  in  Ency.  Brit,  ninth  ed.,  xxi.  165 
(1886).  I  rescue  this  passage,  because  it  disappears  (why  ?)  in  the  eleventh  ed. 
of  the  Ency.  Brit.,  xxiii.  1023  (1911),  which  reproduces  the  article  (not  included 
in  Works,  1903-4). 


NOTES  427 

p.  280.  Pater.  Uniform  standard  edition,  various  dates,  ed.  C.  L.  Shadwell  ; 
this  includes  the  Guardian  reviews,  and  apparently  all  of  Pater's  published  work 
except  JEsthetic  Poetry  (withdrawn  after  first  ed.  of  Appreciations,  1889),  and 
the  preface  to  Mr.  Shadwell's  own  translation,  1892,  of  Dante's  Purgatorio, 
i-xxvii.  There  is  a  bibliography,  often  giving  dates  of  composition,  in  the  Misc. 
Studies,  and  further  detail  in  the  editor's  preface  to  Greek  Studies.  The  best 
biographical  sketch,  embodying  corrections  of  various  legends,  is  by  A.  C. 
Benson,  1907,  in  'Eng.  Men  of  Letters'  series.  T.  Wright,  Life  of  W.  P., 
1907,  gives  a  full  chronicle.  See,  too,  E.  Gosse,  Critical  Kit-hat-',  1896,  and  art. 
in  D.N.  B. 

p.  295.  Leslie  Stephen.  F.  W.  Maitland,  Life  and  Letters  of  L.  S.,  1906  ; 
and  see  art.  in  D.  N.  B.,  Suppl.  ii.,  by  Sir  Sidney  Lee  ;  and  Letters  of  George 
Meredith,  1912.  Meredith's  letters  to  Stephen  illustrate  the  stern  courage,  and 
the  common  points  in  the  creed,  of  the  two  men.  Vernon  Whitford  in  The 
Egoist  was  sketched  from  Stephen  (Letters  of  G.  M.,  ii.  331). 

p.  297.  Dowden.     Letters  of  E.  Douxl, ,,,  ed.  E.  D.  Duwden  and  H.  M.,  1914. 

p.  299,  note  1.  Furnivall.  See  F.  J.  F.,  a  Volume  of  Personal  Record,  1911 
(memoir  by  J.  Munro,  and  49  notes  and  recollections  by  as  many  hands).  Also 
An  E>iglish  Miscellany,  1901,  presented  to  Furnivall  on  his  75th  birthday, 
and  containing  49  contributions  and  bibliography. 

p.  299,  note  2.  Hutton.  See  his  Essays,  Theological  and  Literary,  2  vols., 
1871  and  1877. 

p.  301.  J.  C.  Hare.  See  note,  p.  423,  1.  8,  ante,  to  p.  208  of  text  (on  'broad 
church').  The  articles  there  referred  to  by  Maurice  and  Stanley  contain  full 
accounts  of  Hare  and  his  activities  ;  his  theology  had  a  character  of  its  own,  and 
he  belonged  to  no  '  part}'.' 

p.  303.  Enigmas  of  Life.  The  18th  ed.  (1891),  which  I  have  used,  contains 
a  memoir  by  Mrs.  W.  Ii.  Greg.  It  is  explained  that  Greg  expressly  forbore 
to  discuss  the  questions  of  theism  and  the  soul  in  set  form,  feeling  that  they  do 
not  admit  of  positive  answer,  and  that  each  man  may  keep  his  own  working 
theory  on  the  matter.  Among  the  more  striking  articles  are  those  on  '  The 
direction  of  human  development,'  on  'The  significance  of  life,'  Dc  Profundi's, 
and  Elsewhere. 

p.  305.  John  Brown.  See  his  Letters,  ed.  by  his  son  and  D.  W.  Forrest, 
with  introd.  by  Eliz.  T.  M'Laren,  1907  (includes  letters  from  Ruskin,  Thackeray, 
etc.) ;  also  Dr.  J.  B.,  by  John  Taylor  Brown  (his  cousin),  1903,  ed.  W.  B. 
Dunlop.  The  title  Bone  Snbsecivce  is  sometimes  applied  to  the  first  series 
(1858),  sometimes  to  all  three  ;  but  the  second  and  third  have  also  special  titles, 
namely  Locke  and  Sydenham,  and  John  Leech  and  other  Papers,  respectively. 
Hab,  Marjorie  Fleming,  and  some  other  single  papers  have  been  very  often 
reprinted. 

p.  307.  Butler.  Life  and  Letters,  by  H.  Festing  Jones,  2  vols.,  1919  ;  li.  A. 
Streatfeild,  S.  B.,  Records  and  Memorials,  1903  ;  art.  in  D.  N.  B.,  Suppl.  ii., 
by  T.  Seccombe.  Bibliography  in  Camb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit,,  xiii.  570-2.  Most  of 
the  works  easy  of  access  in  modern  reprints.  For  Butler's  own  view  of  his  more 
important  ideas  see  his  Note-Books,  ed.  Festing  Jones,  1912,  pp.  374-8  ;  and 
id.,  pp.  379-98,  for  his  verses,  including  the  memorable  Psalm  of  Montreal,  the 
Whitmanesque  pieces  The  Righteous  Man  and  To  Critics  and  Others,  and  the 
version  in  Homeric  Greek  of  some  observations  by  Mrs.  Gamp. 


428  NOTES 

p.  308.  the  modern  biologist.  See,  for  a  full  conspectus,  Marcus  Hartog's 
introduction,  pp.  ix-xxxv,  to  Unconscious  Memory,  ed.  of  1910.  I  have  not 
touched  in  text  on  this  favourite  idea  of  Butler's,  nor  on  his  extension  of  the 
idea  of  a  'machine'  or  'tool'  (set  forth  in  Erewhan  and  elsewhere),  to  the 
human  organism  and  to  its  possible  supplanters. 

p.  313.  Ricardian  views.  On  Miss  Martineau's  economics  see  Cazamian,  Le 
Roman  .social  en  Angleterre,  pp.  96-110. 

p.  315.  Burton.  Lady  Burton,  Life  of  Captain  Sir  R.  F.  Burton,  2  vols., 
1898.  T.  Wright,  Life  of  Sir  R.  B.,  2  vols.,  1<)06,  adds  a  great  amount  of 
material,  and  deals,  inter  alia,  with  the  debated  matter  of  Burton's  borrowings 
(for  his  Arabian-  Nights)  from  John  Payne,  also  the  translator  of  Villon, 
Boccaccio,  etc.,  and  an  original  poet  as  well  ;  Payne's  translations  in  verse  and 
prose  are  often  beautiful  and  elegant. 

p.  319.  Borrow.  Bibliography  by  G.  F.  Black,  in  A  Gypsy  Bibliography 
(Gypsy  Lore  Soc.  Monographs,  No.  1),  1914,  pp.  21-5  ;  and.  in  Knapp,  vol.  ii. 
(including  note  of  MSS.).  W.  T.  Knapp,  Life,  Writings,  and  Corresp.  of  G.  B., 
2  vols.,  1889,  gives  a  store  of  indispensable  documents,  and  is  not  superseded. 
H.  Jenkins,  Life  of  G.  B.,  1912,  adds  many  more  ;  a  well  written  and  ordered 
biography,  and  C.  Shorter,  G.  B.  and  his  Circle,  1913,  furnishes  yet  more 
letters  and  illustrative  material.  Borrow's  five  original  works,  and  the  Romano 
Lavo-Lil,  are  in  easily  accessible  edd.  ;  on  his  translations  see  note  below.  The 
edd.,  in  Methuen's  'Little  Library,'  of  Lavcngro,  by  F.  Hindes  Groome,  2  vols., 
1901,  and  of  The  Romany  Rye,  by  John  Sampson,  are  valuable  in  point  of  gypsy 
lore  and  otherwise.  The  articles  by  T.  Watts-Dunton  in  Chambers's  Cyclop,  of 
Eng.  Lit.,  1903,  iii.  429-35,  and  inAthenmim,  3  and  10  Sept.  1881,  are  notice-; 
able  ;  I  have  failed  to  see  S.  Jackson  Pratt's  Gleanings  in  England,  Wales,  and 
Holland,  to  which  Watts-Dunton  refers  as  probably  studied  by  Borrow.  See, 
too,  T.  Seccombe's  ed.  of  Isopel  Berners  (i.e.  the  relevant  chapters),  1901,  also 
E.  Thomas,  G.  B.,  1912.  For  a  meritorious  parody  of  Borrow's  adventures  on 
the  English  roads,  see  '  Borrowed  Scenes,'  in  Sir  A.  Conan  Doyle's  Danger,  and 
other  Stories,  1918,  pp.  127-44. 

p.  320,  note  1.  loomwork.  For  examples  see  Sampson,  Rom.  Rye,  introduction, 
tracing  from  contemporary  evidence  one  of  Borrow's  itineraries,  and  marking  some 
of  his  bold  coincidences.  So  Jenkins,  op.  cit.,  pp.  58-9,  etc.  :  'he  never  hesitated 
to  change  a  date  if  it  served  his  purpose,  much  as  an  artist  will  change  the 
position  of  a  tree  in  a  landscape  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  composition.'  F. 
Hindes  Groome  in  his  ed.  of  Lavcngro  gives  compact  examples  of  Borrow's  '  lax 
adherence  to  fact,'  such  as  his  'pretended  visits  to  Iceland,  Moultan,  and  Kiachta,' 
and  his  antedating  by  nine  years  (a  point  noted  by  Knapp)  of  the  incident  of 
the  trotting  stallion  in  Lavengro,  ch.  xvi.  The  notes  by  Sampson  and  Groome 
also  illustrate  Borrow's  casual  methods  with  the  Romany  language. 

p.  320,  note  2.  hardly  explored.  I  owe  to  Dr.  J.  Sampson  a  reference  to 
Richard  Bright,  Travels  from  Vienna  through  Lower  Hungary,  1818, — a  still 
earlier  account  (and  also  Ford's  remark,  text,  p.  321,  about  Gil  Bias). 

p.  320,  note  3.  letters.  Printed  by  T.  H.  Darlow,  Letters  of  G.  B.  to  tlie 
Brit,  ami  For.  Bible  Soc,  1911  ;  copies  of  them  had  previously  been  used  by 
Jenkins,  Life,  chs.  vi.-xx.  ;  those  written  from  Russia,  chs.  vi.-ix.,  are  of  much 
vigour  and  interest.  Amongst  the  passages  transcribed,  often  with  small 
changes  and  insertions,  from  these  letters  into  the  Bible  in  Spain,  are  the  first 


NOTES  420 

three  chapters.  For  the  next  eight  (iv.-xi.)  any  originals  that  may  have  existed 
are  lost ;  the  transcripts  recommence  fully  in  ch.  xv.,  with  Borrow's  second 
arrival  in  Spain,  but  there  are  many  additions.  The  vivid  chaps,  xxiii.,  xxiv. 
(from  Astorga  to  Villafranca)  are  again  copied  ;  and  so  on.  The  new  matter 
increases  as  the  book  goes  on  ;  but  the  scene  (ch.  xxxv.)  iu  the  Black  Pass, 
quoted  from  in  my  text,  p.  321,  ante,  is  almost  verbally  reproduced  (from  the 
letter  of  Nov.  1,  1837,  Letters,  pp.  257-9)  ;  so  is  the  night  visit  at  Oviedo  of  the 
ten  cavaliers  (ch.  xxxiii.)  ;  and  so,  too,  is  the  strange  incident  of  the  Jew  who 
warned  Borrow  of  danger  by  pronouncing  the  Hebrew  word  for  'rabbit'  (ch. 
xliv.  ;  Letters,  p.  346). 

p.  321.  Richard  Ford.  Ford  was  a  shrewd  and  sympathetic  adviser  of  Borrow 
(who  was  not  conspicuous  for  gratitude)  and  critic  of  his  work  (see  Jenkins, 
Life  of  G.  B.,  index  s.u).  See  Letters  of  R.  F.,  1797-1858,  ed.  R.  E.  Prothero, 
1905.  The  Handbook  (one  of  Murray's)  is,  as  Mr.  Prothero  well  says  (p.  173),  'a 
most  entertaining  encyclopedia  of  Spanish  history  and  antiquities,  religion  and 
art,  life  and  manners  ' ;  and  '  communicates  to  the  reader  a  prodigious  mass  of 
information  in  the  easiest  possible  manner.'  There  have  been  many  edd.  ;  that 
of  1845  is  said  to  be  the  most  vivid  ;  and  certainly  it  is  hard  to  open  on  a  page 
that  is  not  full  of  life. 

p.  324.  Galloway  notes.  Partly  printed  by  Knapp,  Life,  ii.  219-22  ;  and  in 
full,  from  the  original  material  supplied  by  Knapp,  in  The  Gallovidian, 
Dumfries,  summer  number,  1905,  pp.  116-26,  by  Andrew  M'Cormick  (another 
reference  which  I  owe  to  Dr.  J.  Sampson). 

p.  327,  note  1.  style.  See  Shorter,  G.  B.  and  his  Circle,  p.  284,  who  quotes 
Borrow's  remark  (made  to  Whitwell  Elwin) :  'that  his  composition  cost  him  a 
vast  amount  of  labour,  that  his  first  drafts  were  diffuse  and  crude,  and  that  he 
wrote  his  productions  several  times  before  he  hadvcondensed  and  polished  them 
to  his  mind.'  See  too  id.,  p.  268,  for  Borrow's  remark  about  '  Turkish,'  quoted 
in  my  text,  p.  328. 

p.  327,  note  2.  Gordon  Hake.  Shorter,  op.  cit.,  p.  391  ;  reported  by  Watts- 
Dunton. 

p.  328.  translations.  I  have  only  been  able  to  see  the  Romantic  Ballads, 
reprinted  by  Jarrold,  Norwich,  1913  (Sir  John  is  there,  pp.  40-3)  ;  and  the 
Targum,  also  reprinted  by  Jarrold,  London  [1892],  in  one  vol.  with  The  Talis- 
man, etc.  Filicaja's  terzine  are  translated  (in  the  same  metre)  in  Targum, 
pp.  98-100.  The  Lag  of  Biarhe,  id.,  pp.  40-1,  is  an  impudently  lax  reproduc- 
tion of  the  Norse  Biarka-Mal,  and  the  scrap  from  Beowulf  (id.,  p.  39)  is  no 
better.  The  two  passages  from  the  Iliad,  though  fairly  close,  are  in  spavined 
and  stumbling  hexameters. 

p.  231,  note  1.  Tennyson.  Bibliography,  by  T.  J.  Wise,  2  vols.,  1908 ;  and 
Grolier  Club,  Chronolog.  List  of  Works,  New  York,  1897  (and  see  Camb.  Hist. 
Eng.  Lit.,  xiii.  473  ff.).  A.  E.  Baker,  Concordance,  1914.  Works,  ed.  Hallam, 
Lord  Tennyson,  9  vols.,  1907-8,  with  the  poet's  notes.  Many  one-vol.  and 
other  edd.  of  Works.  J.  Churton  Collins,  The  Early  Poems  of  T.,  1900  (a  valu- 
able ed.),  reprints  discarded  pieces,  and  collates  up  to  the  vol.  of  1842  inclusive 
(save  for  Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  reprinted  by  the  present  Lord  Tennyson,  1893). 
For  In  Mcmoriam  see  the  standard  commentary  (without  text)  by  A.  C.  Brad- 
ley, 1901.  Many  ed.  of  separate  poems,  by  many  hands.  For  biography  see 
Memoir,  2  vols.,  1897  (and  one  vol.  1899),  by  the  present  Lord  Tennyson,  the 


430  NOTES 

poet's  son,  and  his  T.  and  his  Friends,  1911  ;  also  Lady  Ritchie,  Records  of  T., 
Ruskiih,  Browning,  1892  ;  and  the  Oarlyle,  Browning,  Fitzgerald,  and  Huxley 
literature.  Many  short  lives  and  studies,  e.g.  by  A.  Lang,  1901  ;  Sir  A.  Lyall, 
1902  ;  A.  C.  Benson,  1904.  See  too  W.  MacNeile  Dixon,  A  Primer  of  T., 
1896;  W.  P.  Ker,  T. :  A  Lecture,  1909;  and  0.  Elton,  T,  in  Modern  Studies, 
1907.     On  Prof.  Lounsbury's  illuminating  work  see  notes  infra. 

p.  331,  note  2.  Coleridge.  Table  Talk,  remark  of  April  24,  1833.  He  says 
that  T.  'has  begun  to  write  verses  without  very  well  understanding  what  metre 
is,'  and  advises  him  to  write  'for  the  next  two  or  three  years'  only  in  'one  or 
two  well-known  and  strictly-defined  metres.'  This  sounds  humorous  in  view  of 
the  sequel,  but  the  force  of  it  is  clear  if  we  turn  to  some  of  the  poems  that 
Tennyson  suppressed.     See  Lounsbury,  Life  and  Times,  etc.,  pp.  343-4. 

p.  333.  Poe.  For  his  appreciation  of  Tennyson,  see  reff.  in  Lounsbury,  Life 
and  Times  of  T.,  pp.  461-2  ;  the  words  ventus  textilis  come  from  Democratic 
Review,  Dec.  1844  (as  quoted  through  Heme  Shepherd  by  Churton  Collins, 
Early  Poems  of  T.,  p.  43)  ;  I  have  not  seen  these  American  periodicals. 

p.  335.  Tennyson's  reputation.  See  The  Life  and  Times  of  Tennyson  (from 
1S09  to  1850),  by  the  late  Prof.  T.  R.  Lounsbury,  1915  ;  a  minute  study  of  all 
the  early  criticisms,  bad  and  otherwise,  in  well-known  and  other  periodicals  ; 
with  special  reference  to  the  doings  of  Wilson,  Lockhart,  Bulwer,  etc.,  to  the 
reception  of  Tennyson  in  America  ;  and  to  the  poet's  own  reception  of  his 
critics.  J.  S.  Mill's  praise  in  the  London  Review,  July  1835,  shines  out  among 
the  rest  (p.  346  ff.).  Tennyson's  changes  of  text  were  seldom  due  to  the 
critics,  pp.  400  ff.  ;  also,  pp.  500  ff.,  his  public  reputation,  as  distinct  from 
his  recognition  by  the  elect,  was  quite  gradual  even  after  1842.  Prof.  Louns- 
bury died  before  giving  his  work  the  last  revision,  which  has  been  made  by  Mr. 
Wilbur  L.  Cross. 

p.  339.  Boadicea.  Written  1859,  published  in  Cornhill,  Dec.  1863,  among 
Attempts  at  Classic  Metres  in  Quantity,  and  in  the  Enoch  Arden  vol.  next  year 
among  Experiments.  Meredith's  Phaethon,  first  in  Fortnightly,  Sept.  1867, 
later  in  Ballads  and  Poems  of  Tragic  Life,  1887.  The  technique  of  the  measure 
in  the  two  poems,  though  in  both  cases  within  the  rules,  has  a  different 
effect,  Meredith's  lines  ending  oftener  on  the  stress,  and  being  generally 
nunieder. 

p.  341.  The  Princess.  See  Lounsbury,  Life  and  Times  of  T.,  ch.  xx.  for 
brief  account  of  the  revision  ;  and  edd.  of  the  poem  by  J.  C.  Collins,  and  by 
P.  M.  Wallace. 

p.  344.  A  living  poet.     Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  in  Discoveries,  1907,  p.  12. 

p.  347.  trance-experience.  See  Memoir,  1899,  pp.  815-16,  where  Tyndall 
reports  Tennyson's  account  of  an  indescribable  state  '  into  which  he  could  throw 
himself  by  thinking  intently  of  his  own  name.'  He  said  :  'By  God  Almighty, 
there  is  no  delusion  in  the  matter  !  It  is  no  nebulous  ecstasy,  but  a  state  of 
transcendent  wonder,  associated  with  absolute  clearness  of  mind.' 

p.  349.  Rizpah.  See  Lit.  Anecdotes  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  2  vols.,  1896, 
ed.  Sir  W.  R.  Nicoll  and  T.  J.  Wise,  ii.  441-2,  where  is  quoted  H.  Martin, 
Hist,  of  Brighton  and  its  Environs,  Brighton,  1871,  telling  of  an  event  dated 
1792.  One  Rock  was  hanged  for  mail-robbing  ;  and  his  'aged  mother,'  we  hear, 
'night  after  night,  in  all  weathers,  and  especially  in  tempestuous  weather, 
visited '  the  gallows,  brought  home  the  bones  as  they  fell,  and  '  in  the  dead 


NOTES  431 

silence  of  the  night  interred  them,  deposited  in  a  chest,  in  the  hallowed  ground 
of  Old  Shoreham  Church.' 

p.  351,  Enid  and  Nimue.  On  all  this,  see  an  article  on  The  Building  of  the 
Idylls,  in  Lit.  Anecdotes  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  ii.  219-72,  which  gives  much 
bibliographical  and  textual  detail,  and  on  which  I  draw  freely.  There  seems  to 
be  no  complete  apparatus  criticus  yet  of  the  text.  See  too  S.  H.  Gurteen,  The, 
Arthurian  Epic,  1895  ;  and,  for  a  close  comparison  of  the  Id  nils,  point  by  point, 
with  originals,  H.  Littledale,  Essays  on  Lord  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  Kivg, 
1893. 

p.  353.  prose  argument  of  Balin.     In  Memoir,  1899,  pp.  529-34. 

p.  360.  metres.  See  Saintsbury,  Hist,  of  Enej.  Prosody,  ii.  183-240, 
'  Tennyson  and  Browning.' 

p.  361.  Charles  Tennyson  Turner.  Instalments  of  his  sonnets  were  published 
in  1830,  1864,  1868,  and  1873.  These,  with  fifty  more,  were  collected  in  1880, 
with  a  biographical  note  by  Hallam  (afterwards  Lord)  Tennyson,  and  with  a 
full  and  sympathetic  essay  by  James  Spedding.  Variants  are  recorded,  and 
also  the  MS.  comments  made  by  S.  T.  Coleridge  in  his  copy  of  the  1830 
volume. 

p.  364,  note  1.  Browning.  Bibliography:  in  (Sir)  W.  R.  Nicoll  and  T.  J. 
Wise,  Lit.  Anecdotes  of  the  XlXth  Cent.,  2  vols.,  1895-6,  i.  360-627  ;  founded 
partly  on  lists  by  F.  J.  Furnivall  in  Browning  Soc.  Papers,  pt.  i.  pp.  27-71 
(1881).  Shorter  lists,  e.g.  in  A.  Symons,  Introd.  to  the  Study  of  B.  (1886),  new 
ed.  of  1906,  pp.  241-54.  Biography  :  Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr,  Life  and  Letters 
of  B.  B.,  1891  (new  ed.  1908,  revised  by  Sir  F.  G.  Kenyon)  ;  Life,  by  W.  Hall 
Griffin,  completed  by  H.  C.  Minchin,  1910  (the  fullest  and  latest).     Letter*  of 

B.  B.  and  E.  B.  Barrett,  IS^o-G,  2  vols.,  1899  ;  and  see  some  Letters  privately 
printed  by  T.  J.  Wise,  2  vols.,  1895-6.  See,  too,  Lady  Ritchie  [Miss  Thackeray], 
Records  of  Tennyson,  R\i*kin,  and  B.,  1892.  Many  edd.  of  works  ;  e.g.  in  10 
vols.,  1912  (centenary  \  with  introductions  by  Sir  F.  G.  Kenyon  ;  in  17  vols., 
1888-94  ;  in  2  vols.,  1896  ;  and  other  popular  forms  ;  many  selections.  The 
best  short  guide  is  still  that  of  Symons,  op.  cit.  above,  which  treats  of  Brown- 
ing's art  as  well  as  of  his  ideas  ;  see,  too,  Mrs.  S.  Orr,  Handbook  to  the  Works 
of  B.,  1885,  and  E.  Berdoe,  Browning  Cyclopaedia,  1892.  Amongst  more 
continuous  studies  may  be  named  those  of  P.  Berger,  R.  B.,  1912  (Grands 
Ecrivains  etrangers)  ;  Stopford  A.  Brooke,  The  Poetry  of  B.,  1902  ;  G.  K. 
Chesterton,  B.,  1903  ;  E.  Dowden,  R.  B.,  1904  ;  C.  H.  Herford,  B.,  1905.  The 
gifted  early  interpreter  of  the  poet,  J.  T.  Nettleship,  should  not  be  forgotten  ; 
Essays  on  B.'s  Poetry,  1868,  enlarged  1890,  as  R.  B.,  Essays  and  Thoughts  (see 
especially  analyses  of  Sordello,  Christmas  Eve,  and  of  Fifine,  etc.  ;  and  classifi- 
cation of  poems,  pp.  321-5,  ed.  1890). 

p.  364,  note  2.  explaining.  The  Papers  of  the  Browning  Society,  which  w:is 
led  by  F.  J.  Furnivall,  extend  from  1881  to  1890,  and  contain,  besides  the 
bibliography  named  above,  material  still  of  much  value.  See  (e.g.)  1885,  A. 
Symons,  'Is  B.  dramatic  ?'  ;  1886,  H.  S.  Pearson,  'B.  as  a  landscape-painter'  ; 

C.  H.  Herford,  No.  37,  on  Hohevstid-Schvxingaa. 

p.  366.  Shelley.  Browning's  Introductory  Essay  to  Letters  of  Percy  Bysxhe 
Shelby,  1852,  disappeared  when  the  letters  were  found  to  be  forged  and  ihc 
vol.  was  suppressed;  but  was  reprinted  by  the  Browning  Society  and  the 
Shelley  Society,  and  latterly  (1911)  by  Miss  L.  Winstanley,  with  introduction 


432  NOTES 

and  notes  (along  with  Sidney's  Defence  of  Poetry)  in  the  '  Belles-Lettres  Series 
(Boston,  U.S.A.,  and  London).     Its  value  is  not  impaired  by  the  spuriousness 
of  the  letters.     Memorabilia  came  in  the  vol.  of  1855. 

p.  367.  story  of  Sordello.  See  J.  T.  Nettleship,  Essays  on,  Browning,  ed. 
1890,  pp.  114-69  (originally  1868)  ;  and  Browning  Soc.  Papers,  1889,  No.  57, 
W.  J.  Alexander,  Analysis  of  S.  ;  also  1889,  No.  62,  W.  M.  Rossetti,  on  the 
historical  Tanrello  Sulinguerra. 

p.  371.  Bells  and  Pomegranateu.  See  Exodus  xxviii.  33,  3  4 :  'And  beneath 
upou  the  hem  of  it  thou  shalt  make  pomegranates  of  blue,  and  of  purple,  and 
of  scarlet  .  .  .  and  bells  of  gold  between  them  round  about :  a  golden  bell  and  a 
pomegranate,  a  golden  bell  and  a  pomegranate,  upon  the  hem  ot  the  robe  round 
about.'  Also  preface  to  B.  and  P.,  No.  viii.,  1846,  quoted  by  Symons,  Introd. 
to  B.,  1906  ed.,  pp.  258-9  :  'an  endeavour  towards  something  like  an  alteration, 
or  mixture,  of  music  with  discoursing,  sound  with  sense,  poetry  with  thought  ; 
which  looks  too  ambitious,  thus  expressed,  so  the  symbol  was  preferred.'  The 
bells  'of  gold'  can  chime  well  and  sweetly  enough,  but  the  pomegranates,  the 
fruit  of  wisdom,  have  a  seed  which  at  times  is  hard  and  gritty. 

p.  372,  note  1.  Domett's  Ranolf  and  Amohia  [Aniohla],  1872,  is  a  long  tale 
in  verse,  not  lacking  in  poetry  or  entertainment,  but  compact  of  queerness,  and 
thus  far  worthy  of  '  Waring.'  Ranolf,  in  the  intervals  of  wooing  the  Maori 
maiden  and  hearing  native  songs  and  legends,  muses  on  science,  and  on  various 
philosophic  and  theologic  systems,  which  he  turns  into  somewhat  neat  heroics. 
Can  Browning  be  glanced  at  in  the  lines  (p.  60), 

'  still  high  and  clear  forth  stood 
For  this  inquirer's  cheery  thought  and  mood, 
God  and  the  great  predominance  of  Good,'  etc.  ? 

The  passage  of  happiest  colour  is  perhaps  that  on  the  cicada  (p.  315),  which  has 
a  Greek -idyllic  kind  of  beauty. 

p.  372,  note  2.  Carducci.  See  his  lecture,  Jaufrc  Riulel:  Poesia  Antica  c 
Moderna,  Bologna,  1888.  Carducci  gives  the  earliest  allusion  to  Rudel,  trans- 
lations from  his  poems,  and  of  extracts  from  Uhland  and  Heine.  His  own  little 
romance  is  appended,  ad  fin. 

p.  378.  Wiseman.  Griffin  and  Minchin,  Life  of  R.  B.,  p.  202,  whence  I 
take  quotation  from  Rambler  (Jan.  1856). 

p.  380.  King  and  the  Book.  See  above  all  Charles  W.  Hodell,  The  Old 
Yellow  Book:  Source  of  Browning's  'The  Ring  ami  the  Booh'  (in  complete 
photo-reproduction,  with  translation,  essay,  and  notes),  Carnegie  Institution  of 
Washington,  1908.  The  translations  give  all  essential  parts  ;  the  essay  (on 
which  I  have  drawn  freely)  contains  valuable  analyses  of  the  documents  and  of 
Browning's  use  of  them,  which  is  most  minutely  worked  out  in  the  'corpus  of 
topical  notes'  and  line-index,  pp.  294-342.  I  have  barely  indicated  Browning's 
immense  assimilation  of  his  '  case.'  The  Book  is  now  in  Balliol  College 
Library.  Mr.  Hodell  also  prints  the  Casanatense  pamphlet,  not  used  by  the 
poet,  and  reproduces  the  contemporary  pen-sketch  of  the  very  Guido,  said  to 
have  been  done  on  the  night  before  his  execution  (p.  274).  The  Casanatense 
tract  is  given  in  Griffin  and  Minchin,  Life,  pp.  309-27,  '  App.  B.' 

p.  381.  Henry  James.  Notes  on  Novelists,  1914,  pp.  306-26,  'The  Novel 
in  The  Ring  and  the  Book1  (originally  an  address  given  in  1912  on  the  anniver- 


NOTES  433 

sary  of  Browning's  birthday).  The  imagined  novel,  for  reasons,  would  make 
Caponsacchi  '  the  indicated  centre  of  our  situation  or  determinant  of  our  form ' 
(p.  322),  and  would  end  with  a  solitary  interview  between  him  and  the  Pope  ; 
'  there  is  a  scene,  if  we  will.' 

p.  385,  note  1.  '  cause  c6lebre.;  See  Nicoll  and  Wise,  Lit.  Anecdotes  of 
XlXth  Cent.,  i.  516-17,  which  gives  the  names,  and  Furnivall's  note.  Browning 
himself  made  the  names  public  later. 

p.  385,  note  2.  Inn  Album.  See  id.,  i.  533,  for  Furnivall's  note  (in  Notet 
and  Queries,  March  25, 1876)  on  the  actual  facts  and  on  Browning's  modification 
of  them. 

p.  387.  Herakles.  In  Browning  '  Herakles,'  '  Alkestis,;  '  Aischulos,'  and  so 
on.  In  this  purist  spelling  the  poet  (Artemis  Prologizes,  1842)  had  just 
preceded  Grote  (Hist,  of  Greece,  vols.  i.  and  ii.,  1846),  and  is  more  thorough- 
going ;  see  too  his  preface  to  his  Agamemnon,  1877.  Unluckily  the  vowel- 
values,  as  given  by  an  English  speaker,  still  remain  incorrect  under  this  system  ; 
see  Sir  F.  G.  Kenyou  on  the  point,  Works  of  B.,  1912,  vol.  viii.  pp.  xi-xii. 
Besides,  many  of  these  names  must  be  thought  of  as  now  actually  English  words 
like  '  Plato '  and  '  Homer ' ;  having  often  become  so,  of  course,  through  the 
Latin.  I  therefore  do  not  follow  Browning's  spellings  save  when  quoting  from 
him. 

p.  392,  note  1.  false  accent.  For  the  normal  anapaest  he  often  substitutes  as 
follows : — 

And  the  stars  |  of  night  b6at  |  with  emu  j  tion,  and  ting  |  led  and  shot  | 

Out  in  fire  |  the  strong  pain  |  of  pint  knowl  |  edge  ;  but  I  |  fainted  n<5t  |  . 
Now  the  words  in  italics,  if  read  naturally,  must  bear  a  full  stress  ('the  strong 
pain,'  etc.) ;  but  then,  if  this  value  be  given  to  them,  the  metre  disappears  ;  for 
•  Out  in  fire  the  strong  pain  of  pent  knowledge '  simply  will  not  go  into  verse. 
So,  to  recover  the  metre,  we  are  tempted   to  read   these  words  with   lighter 
stresses  :  '  the  strong  pain  |  of  pent  knowl  |  edge,'  which  is  unnatural  reading. 
The  point  may  seem  a  fine  one,  but  much  of  the  discomfort  and  jar  in  Browning's 
utterance  is  due  to  it.     Conversely,  the  metre  requires  a  perhaps  doubly  false 
emphasis  in  '  fainted  not '  (or  '  fainted  not '),  which  is  unnatural  ;  the  prose  run 
is  a  '  dactyl,'  i.e.  '  fainted  not,'  which  murders  the  metre.     So,  in  the  line 
And  I  stopped  |  here  ;  for  h^re,  |  in  the  dark  |  ness,  Sa'ul  groaned, 
the  second  foot  is  dubious,  for  the  natural  run  requires  the  '  cretic '  ( 'x' ) 
which  is  over-harsh  ;  while  the  variation  (x ",  '  bacchius :)  in  the  last  foot  is  a 
superb  one,  and  quite  natural. 

p.  392,  note  2.  grammar.  Shadworth  Hodgson,  Theory  of  Practice,  1870, 
ii.  272  If.,  says  that  his  style  shows  'the  constant  wrestling  with  the  difficulties 
which  the  English  language  offers  to  the  combination  of  brevity  and  rapidity 
with  clearness  and  fulness  of  thought.'  B.  is  always  ' elliptically  suppressing 
relatives,  articles,  prepositions,  auxiliary  verbs,  and  the  "  to  "  in  infinitives  ;  and 
thus  having  continually  to  trust  to  the  context  to  show  whether  the  word  is  a 
verb,  noun,  or  participle.  .  .  .  This  dependence  of  the  syntactical  construction  . 
upon  the  context  .  .  .  compels  the  reader  to  be  constantly  interpreting  the 
parts  by  the  whole  instead  of  the  whole  by  the  parts,  and  constitutes,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  at  once  the  peculiar  difficulty  and  the  peculiar  beauty  of  Mr. 
Browning's  style.' 

p.  394.  philosophised.     The  course  of  Browning's  speculations  is  shown  well 
VOL.  I.  2  E 


434  NOTES 

though  unsynipathetieally,  by  Benn,  Rationalism,  ii.  275-83.  The  whole 
chapter,  '  Rationalism  in  politics  and  literature,'  is  noteworthy.  Mr.  Benn  is 
concerned  with  ideas  and  not  with  art,  and  is  pleasantly  prone  to  consider  all 
transitional  and  unsystematic  minds  as  'gelatinous,'  but  his  analyses  are  of 
value. 

p.  397.  Mrs.  Browning.  Letters,  ed.  F.  G.  Kenyon,  2  vols.,  1897  ;  Letters  of 
R.  Browning  and  E.  B.  Barrett,  2  vols.,  1899  ;  Letters  of  E.  B.  Browning  to 
R.  H.  Home,  2  vols.,  1877.  J.  K.  Ingram,  E.  B.  Browning,  1888  ('Eminent 
Women'  series).  Complete  Poems,  2  vols.,  1904  (also  in  one  vol.).  For  biblio- 
graphy see  (Jamb.  Hist.  Eng.  Lit.,  xiii.  479-85  ;  also  Nicoll  and  Wise,  Lit. 
Anecd.  of  Nineteenth  Cent.,  ii.  81-104  (for  scarce  issues). 

p.  398.  Carlyle.  For  Mrs.  Browning's  essay,  '  disentangled '  from  MS.,  see 
Nicoll  and  Wise,  op.  cit,  ii.  109-22. 

p.  401.  rhyming  falsely.  See  Letters,  ed.  Kenyon,  i.  178,  182-3,  for  Mrs. 
Browning's  defence. 

p.  403.  Aurora  Leigh.  For  a  sympathetic  analysis  of  the  ideas  and  temper  of 
the  poem  see  J.  Texte,  Etudes  de  litt.  europeenne,  1898,  pp.  239-77,  'Elisabeth 
Browning  et  Pidealisme  contemporain.'  It  is  '  un  evangile  de  ce  christianisme 
moderne  qu'on  nous  promet,'  etc.  ;  and  this,  again,  is  '  tres-moderne,  sans  rien 
d'officiel,  et  sans  autre  Dieu,  comme  dit  Taine,  que  "celui  d'une  ame  ardente  et 
feconde  en  qui  la  po^sie  devient  une  piete."  ; 


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